Becoming Clark
by AngorMike
Summary: Some guy gets reincarnated into a baby in a multi-crossover world. He makes plans, like any reincarnator is bound to. Smallville/BtVS/Harry Potter so far.
1. Chapter 1

The first thing he can remember thinking after what felt like a long nap is how comfortable he is. He was so warm and felt no need to get up. There's a distant female voice humming a song. He feels attached to that voice, as if they have a connection. He feels content to just feel content and safe and warm. He slowly drifts back into sleep.

The next time he becomes awake again, he feels like he can think more clearly. He doesn't know how much time he spent sleeping, but he knew he needed the sleep. It felt so good to sleep.

He realizes he can't move around too much. He's curled up in the fetal position, and it seems like he's somewhat confined, but it doesn't feel like a bad confinement. It still feels comfortable.

He can somewhat hear muffled voices, but can't make out what they are saying. There's the female voice that he feels connected to. She's talking with another female voice. They're laughing together, and he feels happy too. He then hears a little girl voice laughing with the female voice he's connected to and the other lady. He slowly starts to feel sleepy, and drifts off to the sound of their laughter. Where ever he is, it's good and comfortable.

The next time he wakes up it's a shock to his system. He hears loud, angry voices. The female he feels connected to is arguing with a male voice, who is also yelling back at her. The loud voices still have that muffled quality. It almost sounds like they are underwater. Or he's underwater. It feels like he's in some kind of fluid, now that he's paying attention, but he has no problems with breathing. He just then realizes he's not even breathing, but he doesn't feel oxygen deprived. His lungs aren't working, but he's just fine.

He tries to open his eyes to see where he is, but he can't. His eyelids won't respond. As he clumsily moves his arms around, trying to feel around him, he brushes his hand against a ropy cord. Following it with his hands, he reaches where his belly button would be, and the cord is attached to his stomach. He realizes he is holding his umbilical cord; he's a bun in the oven at the moment.

This realization comes as quite a shock to him. He's a fetus, waiting to be born. He needs a time out to process this.

So he focuses on the voices he can hear as they argue. The woman who he feels connected to must be his new mother in this life, he realizes. He doesn't know who the man is, maybe his father. Probably it is his father.

He realizes he can't understand what they are saying. They aren't speaking English, that's for sure. So he'll have to learn the language like any other baby, through exposure and context over time. It's kind of hard to get any context when you're still in the womb and unable to see the adults pointing at things and repeating the name over and over. So that's for later then, he decided. For now he'll just...work on accepting what's going on.

It's just really weird that he's still got his past life's memories. The last he can remember is going out for a late night soda and snack run. He was almost home when a semi ran a red light, and then here he was.

Wasn't he supposed to end up in the afterlife? Even if it's reincarnation, he was supposed to go through the way station and drink Granny Meng Po's soup of forgetfulness, right? But he doesn't have any memory of the in between. Maybe she had a bad batch that made him forget only the part between lives?

Well, whatever. It's not like he can do anything about it.

He can tell the argument between his new mother and father is winding down. They seem to be reconciling. He feels a light weight pressing against him. Maybe they are hugging?

Well, at least they are getting along again. It was probably his baby body being a huge influence on his mindset, but he felt himself getting upset the more they argued. So it's good they are hugging and making up.

Several minutes later he was cursing his inability to leave the room. Three words: make up sex. This is exactly why babies don't have self awareness and memory of their time in the womb. Parents will still go at it even while pregnant, and babies need the brain bleach! He so didn't need to know what his new mother's moaning orgasm voice sounded like.

Maybe he had the wrong attitude about this. This is proof of his parents love. Yes, that's right. It's a good and natural thing. Parents love each other, and they show that love by having sex for hours while their traumatized baby is forced to be there.

But hey, at least he knew he was getting some good genes, if the amount of time his dad was able to go at it was any indication. Yup, always look on the sunny side of life…

He definitely wasn't thinking that he didn't have years of being raised by his new mom to cement their mother-son relationship in stone. He definitely wasn't thinking how inter-awkward it would be in the future when he was being breast fed. Or diaper changed. Why did his mind choose that time to remind him of his impending embarrassment? Brain bleach, bring on the brain bleach!

It took quite a while for him to calm himself down and go back to sleep after his parents finished.

* * *

The next several times he woke up, he could tell his new parents were stressed. It was in the sound of their voices, in the urgency they spoke with each other. They didn't seem to argue with each other again, so it was probably external problems.

He didn't know what was going on, but he couldn't stop his mind from speculating. Health problems? Extended family troubles? Financial difficulties?

Why were they even having a kid if their lives were in such rocky circumstances? Not that he was ungrateful, once he thought about it. At least they were willing to bring him into the world, even if it might end up being a tough life.

The more he listened to their voices, the more he came to like them. He couldn't help but start to like them, and imagine what was going on by the tone of their voices. His father, always talking about lists and things he needed to do for the day. His mother, being the angel he knew she was and reassuring him that everything will work out. Sometimes distracting him with humorous news of what was going on with her co-workers, letting them both share some levity despite having to deal with being several months pregnant.

He was determined that he'd be the best baby he could be for his parents. He was determined they wouldn't regret bringing him into the world. No excessive crying. No waking them up in the middle of the night, even if he did end up pissing himself. He would manfully (babyfully?) bear it. They deserved their rest after all they did for him.

* * *

It was finally the day for him to be born. This was something he'd been both looking forward to, and dreading.

It took some time, and was not a pleasant experience. Enough said. Another reason for babies to have brain bleach.

And he was out and breathing again. That was an experience. How many people got to say they remember their first breath?

He finally got to see his parents, and his mom was as beautiful as he thought she'd be, looking at him full of love. His dad was ruggedly handsome, and smiled a lot. He looked so proud.

So he was happy, even if he was a little bobble head that couldn't even crawl.

And he kept his promise to himself. When it was night time, it was sleep time, not cry time. He made with the baby babble. He made with the peek-a-boo. He was a role model baby, and he couldn't wait for his parole to be up and to be able to crawl.

He didn't keep track of the exact number of days, but it was probably only a few weeks after being born when his dad came home, and he could tell something was wrong. He was unusually serious as he told mom something. She started to cry. Something was really wrong.

His mom picked him up, wrapped him up in a dark red blanket and carried him while following his dad. She didn't, couldn't look away from him. He tried to cheer her up, babbling and smiling. It didn't work, she cried even more.

They arrived in a large room shortly after. He couldn't see much about the room, only that it had some pretty sweet tech in it. Much better tech than in his last life, that was for sure. It caught his attention, and he started to look around, but then his mom started speaking to him.

He still couldn't understand the language, but he started getting a very bad feeling in his chest. His mom spoke to him with such sadness and love, he couldn't look away.

Then his dad was there, speaking his piece. It was then, during his dad's speech something finally clicked in his mind. When both his mom and dad addressed him, they called him something. He'd always just assumed it was some form of endearment, like "my baby boy", so he hadn't paid much attention to it, but now he heard it clearly, what they called him.

Kal-El.

His name was Kal-El.

He was fucking Superman.

Which meant his dad was Jor-El. His mom was Lara Lor-Van.

And this was the time that Krypton was about to blow up.

Shit.

This was heavy. Almost too heavy. His parents were about to die. His planet was about to die. And he was about to be sent to Earth, all alone.

There was only one thing he could do. Smile for his parents as they put him in the escape pod. Try to convince them that he would have a happy life. That's why they were doing this, after all. So their bonny boy could live on. It was the only thing he could do to repay them, as small as it was.

He could dwell on how much this sucked later.

The last time he saw his parents, his mom was tremulously smiling at him through her tears, while his dad hugged her to him, and smiled.

It was just like the first time he saw his parents, only scant weeks ago. His dad smiled at him in pride and his mom's gaze was full of love. He seared the memory in his mind. This was them at their finest.

The pod closed up and put him to sleep.

* * *

Time passed while he slept.

He wasn't sure of how much time passed, and he wasn't really lucid. But he felt like some time had passed.

When he next woke up, he was still the same size, so he didn't grow any in the escape pod like some of the Superman movies seemed to imply. He was being cradled in a woman's arms, sitting in the passenger seat of a pickup truck. A man was in the driver's seat.

He could only assume these were Martha and Jonathan Kent.

The woman noticed him waking up, and started baby talking to him.

Normally he would have goo-ed and gah-ed right back at her like the adorable bun he was. But he was still trying to process the death of his parents. It was such a short time, really, but he'd dove into loving them wholeheartedly.

It was…difficult to work through his feelings.

If he'd realized from the beginning who he was and what was to happen, he might have kept up a defense against getting close to Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van. But he hadn't known who his mom and dad were and he'd accepted them wholeheartedly for the short time he knew them.

So, to his later shame when he remembered it, he acted like a bit of a brat to Martha Kent for the next few days. He woke them up in the middle of the night when he was hungry or wet.

He was sure Martha didn't see those few days as him being a little jerk. In her mind he was just "adjusting" to a new life. But he knew. He was a petty little shit for a few days.

It hit him a week later what an ass he was being to two very nice people. They ran a working farm; and him waking them up in the middle of the night was making their lives difficult. Even though they bore it with a smile, it made him feel really guilty. Or maybe it was because they simply bore it with a smile that he felt especially bad.

Here were two very loving people who couldn't have kids of their own, and they miraculously find this baby in a space pod. They could have very easily sold him and the pod to some shady corporation, gotten money, and made their lives so easy. Even adopt some other rug rats if they wanted.

Instead they take him in and hide the pod so no one will do bad things to him, like experimenting on him, testing him to destruction, or autopsying him. And simply accept him into their family.

So, yeah, he felt bad about taking his ill temper out on them.

And he thought about what his birth parents would want. They would definitely want such a good couple to raise their boy.

So he decided that while he'd always remember his first mom and dad in this life, it was okay to have another mom and dad. From then on he didn't wake them in the middle of the night. And he set his new goal: to become a good son and have a good life. The first step? Potty train like a superman.

* * *

The next several months were frustrating in some ways. He could tell he was getting much stronger than normal babies by indirectly soaking up some strength giving sun rays. But parents have this weird thing where they don't want their baby to get sunburned. So anytime he'd crawl into direct sunlight, he would soon be moved out of it. Or get covered up with a blanket or umbrella.

Well, it's not like he could talk properly yet. And even if he could, it's not like he could say, "Mom, dad, I'm gonna be really strong from getting a tan."

So he crawled around for several months, getting what rays he could.

Then he started walking around at eight months. Martha was so proud. Which made him proud in turn. He'd accepted them as his parents, and making them proud and smile at him made him feel pretty good about himself. The simple things in life…

On the bright side, with his strength gradually increasing, he didn't have problems controlling it. He never accidently broke a toy. He kept his strength tests for pebbles and branches and the like. No use wasting money that they didn't have to.

He continued to enjoy his easy life for the next four years. Getting as much sun as he could. Running around the farm. Playing in the yard. And he was a tough little gremlin!

And then he was five and it was time for kindergarten. He'd found out from calendars in the house that he'd landed on Earth in 1980. In his previous life he hadn't been much of a comics fan so there was limited information he had available about the world and events. Sure he'd enjoyed the T.V. shows and movies, and he knew some of the basics. Certain hero's secret identities and some of the big villains, but that was far from being able to predict what would happen in his future.

There had been so many reboots and new story lines during the many decades of Superman comics and shows that what little he knew of events meant bupkis.

What he did discover though, was that he, as Kal-el, had inherited the genes and brains of his two Kryptonian scientist parents. So his thinking, calculating, and ability to process information started out excellent and only got better as he absorbed sunlight.

Which meant that school was incredibly boring, from a learning perspective.

However, playing games and having fun with the other kids was a lot of fun.

'Hey, don't mock now.' Clark thought in a Deadpool meta way. 'It's all about mindset and putting things in perspective. It doesn't matter if I was 15 or 1500 years old in my old life. In this life I'm a kid. If I'm going to ignore my peers and be all snooty because I have a few more years of memories, then I'm going to be a lonely alien. And I have memories of being a machinist who worked 10 hour days. So I know the daily grind of adult life. If you think I'm not taking advantage of a second childhood where I have no responsibilities or bills, you're crazy! And while I'm too young and weak to enact the plans all reincarnators come up with, it's a perfect time to learn patience and acting skills!'

So for the next three years Clark discovered his inner child and played with other kids, while soaking up as much sun as he could. He became good friends with an outgoing boy named Pete Ross.

Every weekend he would test how fast he was. By the time he was seven he was able to break the sound barrier while running. By the time he was eight, he'd figured out how to fly, and he could go mach 2 while flying.

He could never quite go as fast while running as he could while flying, because of all the obstacles he'd have to dodge. He didn't want to go breaking the sound barrier while running the highways, so he always ran cross country.

Shortly after his eighth birthday, Clark found the storm cellar that his escape pod had been stored in by his dad. He decided it was time to start doing some of the things he'd dreamed up. First thing on the agenda was to have a little talk with the A.I. on his escape pod.

Clark walked down the stairs into the storm cellar, looking at the corner the pod was hidden in under all the debris. He uncovered the pod. Once he did, the A.I. tried to do the whole overawe light show.

"Kal-El. I am your father, Jor-El." Huh, so the A.I. knew English. That made this easier.

"Nope." Clark promptly replied.

"Yes, Kal-El. I am your father. I sent you here to fulfill your destiny. I will guide you." The A.I. was a good bull-shitter. The A.I. had all this knowledge and his father's memories, but he didn't have his father's soul, emotions, love, or pride in family. It's not like the A.I. was his actual father that would act in his best interest but be proud of whatever he chose to do in life. So it kind of made sense that the A.I. would try anything to manipulate or force Clark onto the path he saw was the best, based on the knowledge he had of some prophecy that seemed to fit the circumstances.

But unlike so many people who think they are clever and wise, and think they can force prophecies to mean what they want to mean only to have it bite them on the ass, Clark knew most of it was self-fulfilling drek and wanted no part of it.

"First off, you are an artificial intelligence, an A.I. You may have most of my father's memories inputted in your database, but you are not him." Clark felt blunt honesty was the best way to get through to and reason with soulless machines. "I remember my father and my mother putting me in the escape pod you are currently inhabiting, and sending me away from a great disaster. So don't try to bullshit me. You are not my father; and by trying to emotionally manipulate me, it makes me think your programming is screwed with."

"But I'll go out on a limb and chalk that up to your algorithms telling you the best way to get me to do something for my own good is to pretend to be my father, and let it go this time. But here are some orders for you: Be 100% honest with me, don't try to manipulate me into following what you think or "know" is best for me. Don't hide information you think I'm not prepared for. After giving me all relevant information pertaining to any situation, you may offer your opinion on what course of action I should pursue. Is this understood?"

And Clark stood there staring at his escape pod, waiting for an answer. When the A.I. gave an answer, it was grudgingly dragged out of it.

"Understood, Kal-El."

"Good. I'm glad we've got that out of the way first thing. If we're going to be working with each other for a long time, we need to have an honest and good working relationship. Nothing destroys trust quicker than lies and plotting behind someone's back. It causes paranoia and distrust. Now, I won't call you Jor-El, because you aren't my father. But you are built by and part of the house of El. How about we call you…Vee-El? Is that good or do you want to be called something else?"

Silence that lasted a few breaths of time stretched as the A.I. considered the question. "While you are correct in that I am an A.I. and not the actual Jor-El, my personality matrix is established on his personality and memories. I wish to compromise. JorV-El is the name I would like to use."

"Okay, that's good. It honors the person you were made from while establishing you as your own personhood. JorV-El it is. So, JorV-El, what more can you tell me about my birth parents, and the disaster that caused them to send me here for refuge?" Clark asked.

Clark sat himself down on a box, and listened for the next few hours as JorV-El told him about his father's early years and how he met his mother. It was nice to get to know his first parents in this life better.

When it was time for Clark to go to dinner, he asked JorV-El, or Jorv for short, if there was any communication piece he could have that would let them talk throughout his daily routine at school. Jorv gave him a small earpiece that when placed was undetectable by sight so they could continue to talk. It could also project small holograms that could only be seen by his Kryptonian eyes, so he could read documents and watch videos as well.

It would come in especially handy during the next several years of Clark's public schooling. The lessons were so boring since Clark already knew the material from his previous life. This way he could have Jorv give him lessons in the Kryptonian language and sciences while appearing to pay attention to class. He was able to sub-vocalize his responses to Jorv over the communication device.

After a year of learning the language and becoming fluent, Clark decided it was time for the next phase of his plans. But for that he needed the fortress of solitude. Jorv had already told him about the three crystals that when combined would create a crystal of knowledge that could be used to build a fortress/repository of the knowledge database the Kryptons had gathered over the years.

There had been a prophecy that told of Krypton's demise, so the three stones of power had been placed on Earth centuries ago as a backup so that the knowledge would not be lost. They were linked with the database on Krypton so that whenever an entry was inputted into the database on Krypton, the stones database was also updated.

One weekend while his parents were celebrating their anniversary, Clark brought the escape pod with Jorv and flew out to the Atlantic Ocean. While hovering over international waters, Jorv sent out a ping back request on the necessary frequency. Clark was able to sense the three ping backs.

One was a strong signal to the south west. One was almost directly east. And the third was faint, like it was on the other side of the world.

Clark decided he would grab the one to the east first. He would continue east to pick up the one on the other side of the world. Then he would finish his first time circumnavigating the globe and pick up the one that is currently to his southwest.

Clark sped to the east. It took him a little over two hours at the mach 3 he was able to fly to arrive at his destination, which was Egypt. Doing a visual scan, he was able to see the crystal of fire he was looking for inside a small eagle headed statue. Stowing the statue in his back pack, Clark quickly departed.

It took him a little over three hours to arrive at his next destination, Shanghai, China. It took a bit of scanning, but he was able to locate the crystal of air inside a little horse statue. Two down, one to go. Clark stowed the little statue in his backpack and moved on to the final piece.

A bit over four hours later, Clark arrived at Honduras. He found the crystal of water in a little statue of a Mayan rain god. Stowing the third statue with the other two, Clark then made his way back up to Kansas in less than an hour.

Clark then made his way to the Kawatche Caves where Jorv informed him was a couple items of interest. The first was a starblade called Palak that can give kryptonian powers to a human so they can be powerful enough to act as a guardian, and is supposed to glow in the presence of the legendary hero Naman's evil villainous counterpart, Sageeth.

Clark snorted in contempt. More manipulations to get people to act the way the prophecy wants them to, as if they don't have free will to choose to live how they want.

Clark decided he'd study the blade to see what technology or magic or whatever made it tick. What are the "triggers" that cause it to act like it does. With actual knowledge instead of vague fears and cryptic nonsense warnings, he'd be able to make an informed decision on his future.

The next item was a memory pendant that his father Jor-El left behind when he visited Smallville in the 60's. It contained the memories of his father posing as "Joe" and getting to know Lana Lang's great aunt, Louise McCallum. "A married woman, you're a hound dog, dad!"

The memory showed that Smallville's Mayor Tate (who was the sheriff at the time) had an unrequited love for Louise, and when she was going to leave town with "Joe", Tate used Lachlan Luthor to try to kill "Joe". The bullet fired by Luthor bounced off of "Joe" and killed Louise. Dex McCallum, Louise's husband, was framed for the murder of Louise.

'What a drama.' Clark thought. 'It's too bad my father didn't clean up this mess back when he was here. I'll take care of it later. This also teaches me something. If I'm going to get involved with girls (no way I'm living a monk's life) I've got to figure out how to make them strong enough to protect themselves. My father had the same abilities I have and he wasn't able to save her. Great physical strength and speed isn't the be all and end all. I need great tech and medicine. Magic too, while I'm at it.'

The final item in the Kawatche Caves, and the reason Clark went there in the first place, was an altar that would combine the three crystals into the crystal of knowledge that would build the fortress.

Clark placed the three crystals on the altar, and in a nice light show it combined into one. When he picked up the crystal, Clark and Jorv (still in the escape pod) were teleported to the glaciers at the North Pole. 'You know, Superman never did dress as Santa Claus, did he?' Clark chuckled to himself. 'Well, here we go.'

Clark chucked the crystal into the ice. And his sweet Fortress of Badassitude formed. "What, you expected me to call it the Fortress of Solitude? How emo can you get. I'm out to enjoy life, not make a place for me to mope about my superhuman first world problems. Problems like being tall, handsome, and powerful. Or girls not understanding me (even though they are clearly attracted to me) when it's just my weird honorable hang ups and secrets that cause problems in our relationships. Or my inability to save everyone because I'm not a god." Meta Clark again reared his head.

"Here you are, Jorv, a new home." Clark grandly proclaimed.

"Thank you, Kal-El."

"No problem. Now that we've got this repository of knowledge set up, there are some things we really need to work on. Item one, camouflage and defenses for this place. We don't really want anyone to come knocking, but if they do I don't want them able to enter freely or able to leave and spread tales to others so they can come and try again."

"After defenses, we need to be able to monitor the planets communication. Ideally we would also be able to hack the planet. Or the internet, whatever internet exists in 1989 anyway, and all computers attached to said internet. Let's get an idea of what kind of a world we live in."

"I also want to be able to create bases all over the planet that will act as safe houses, backups to the fortress and its database, and resource caches. Plans will eventually include putting a base on the moon, and eventually other planets or moons of other planets. We can't keep our eggs all in one basket."

"I would like a solution to cure my earth parents of their inability to have children. Ideally it will also make them long lived and invulnerable to most earthly dangers. This solution should be able to be passed down to my future siblings too. Can't let the future rug rats come to harm or be vulnerable to hostage tactics."

"And finally, we're going to be building us a tech company. I will of course need an alias for this, can't have a nine year old be the owner. If you can build a human form robot, or HFR, to fill the CEO slot, that would be good Jorv. This will be the first of many industries we're going to be getting involved in. For now, we're not looking to be leading edge tech; that would bring too much attention to us. We'll start with middle of the pack stuff, but priced to be affordable, so we can gain capital, build infrastructure, and recruit people before we start to do anything that advances human tech."

"I'll go retrieve some sunken wrecks for their gold as starting capital. But get me a list for when I return of other materials you need to start making all this happen." Clark finished up giving Jorv marching orders.

Jorv, the efficient A.I. that he was, and having the increased computing power of the fortress at his digital fingertips, immediately presented the list of needed metals and other items he would need to build his HFR, and build defenses. Having his own HFR would allow Jorv to work on the other tasks while Clark was busy going about his daily routine of school and family life.

Clark changed his itinerary from treasure hunting to dumpster diving. He stealthily gathered metals and other items needed from scrap and junk yards. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it. And after the first batch of goods Clark dug up, and with some HFRs built, he wouldn't have to do it again; he could leave it to the HFRs.

Over the next three years Clark would dedicate one day a week, and sacrifice sleep at nights as needed, to run the errands needed to make his dreams a reality.

He fished out his starting capital for the businesses Jorv would run from sunken ships he'd spotted using his special vision.

He dug out an underground cavern for a bunker far under the Kent farm as a shelter/safe house. Jorv was able to manufacture crystals that when planted would produce the needed structures. The bunkers had multiple purposes. They were a backup database, communications and monitoring nodes, and safe houses that he or his family could use in emergencies.

This was about the time he admitted to his earth parents that he'd always known he was adopted, having memories of his biological parents. They didn't know how to take the information at first, having not expected that talk for quite a few years yet. And for them to inform him, not the other way around. He reassured them he loved them. Then he introduced them to the A.I. Jorv, and explained where he came from, and how his planet died.

To lighten the heavy mood, he explained that he had Jorv create a treatment so they would stay healthy and would be able to have kids. Clark took this time to reveal some of his abilities, like being able to move at high speeds, fly, super strength, and durability. They were naturally flabbergasted, but accepting. They were awesome parents. It eased their mind to know that he would be able to protect himself in the future if government agencies took an interest in him.

In 1990 Clark added two girls to his list of friends when he saved Lana Lang and Emily Dinsmore from drowning. The two girls only lived a mile away from the Kent farm, so Clark would either hang out at their place or at Pete's place for the most part. Pete liked to play sports, mostly football, while the girls liked to play more, well, girly games. It actually cracked Clark to help the girls force Pete to settle for playing house, or at best jump rope, while Pete ached to toss the pigskin. He'd admit he was a little cruel in taking so much pleasure in it at Pete's expense. But, hey, it was funny.

A year later his earth parents had their first baby, a girl that they named Sophia Kent who was born in 1991. The joy and wonder on his earth parents faces made Clark pretty happy with himself for making it possible. And his sister was a cute little thing.

* * *

Jorv was the CEO of the E.L. Group that had several companies under its banner. They had a recycle plant that did a lot more work underground than its human employees knew about. A lot of the raw materials their manufacturing companies needed came from junk and scrap yards through the recycling center. Old rusted out vehicles went through the underground recycling center and became tons of all the required metals, fiberglass, and plastics needed to manufacture consumer goods.

When Jorv ran into the problem of prohibitive costs in shipping and transport, he did the A.I. equivalent of a shrug and simply created their own shipping company. No one was to be allowed to destroy their company through excessive shipping costs and lost goods; Jorv wouldn't allow it.

Clark continued the charade of public schooling so he could relax and hang around his good friends. By 1993 Clark and Pete had already seen a couple of people go crazy from exposure to the kryptonite meteor rocks and exhibit some unusual abilities. Clark let Pete in on a couple of his secrets, like that he was also an enhanced individual. The girls, Lana and Emily, already somewhat knew from when he saved them from drowning.

He decided he'd keep the whole alien thing a secret for now. If his friends weren't able to keep their mouths shut about his enhanced abilities, then they wouldn't be able to keep quiet about Clark being an alien. And it let Pete know just why he wasn't going to be joining him in on his Pop Warner football team, even though he went to the games to cheer them on.

When Clark and Pete had seen some high schooler in the middle of Smallville's main street yell at his girlfriend and shatter his car windows from his voice alone, Clark realized he'd been neglecting something pretty serious: kryptonite. He had Jorv create an environmental cleanup company based in Metropolis that would handle cleanups like oil spills and forest fires around the world. It was good PR for his E.L. Group, and he was able to have a division of HFRs publically work at cleaning up the meteor rocks that would ruin so many people's lives.

Clark then had Jorv work on creating a device that he could wear that would block the effects of Kryptonite from him. He felt much better after putting the wristwatch on. Nothing like getting rid of a weakness to make one happy.

In 1994 Clark made another friend, one Chloe Sullivan who moved to Smallville from Metropolis. Clark showed her around town, and invited her to hang out with him, Pete, Lana, and Emily. She was a gawky little thing at first, and nervous of fitting into a new town. Lana and Emily stepped up like the good girls they were and made her feel welcome.

It did take nearly the whole school year before Clark got the story of why she had to move to Smallville. Chloe's mom had checked herself in to a mental institute. Chloe finally shared that her mother was worried after having told her to clean her hands from some ink and Chloe had been unable to stop washing her hands for hours, until her mother found her and realized she had some kind of command voice that made her obey. Her mother was worried about the effects she would have and that she might unintentionally hurt her daughter.

So Clark set Jorv to figuring out a way to block Chloe's mother's powers from affecting anyone. Within a short few months Chloe had her mother back, and she was very happy.

By 1995 Clark had a second sibling, a little brother named Nathan. He'd also managed to find his cousin, Kara's ship stuck under a nearby dam. When he got her free, she was quite startled that her "baby cousin" was now a year older than her. Martha and Jonathan accepted her with open arms, happy that Clark had another family member alive. She soon joined him in school at his year, with a communication device to Jorv so she wouldn't be too bored. Kara fit in quite well with his group of friends after some time to adjust to the differences of Earth life.

It was far better in his opinion that she join him at the same age than if he'd waited until he was an adult to free her. He knew that in the comics she'd felt displaced, having grown up mostly away from Earth. When she finally woke up on Earth, her own cousin didn't really have time for her, with his busy life as a reporter and as Superman. Depending on the story line Superman just drops her off with a foster family, and went about his life. In Clark's opinion, that was kind of a dick move on Superman's part. And then when Kara decides to join the superhero groups, she's always living in Superman's shadow and reputation.

In Clark's opinion Superman did a poor job in helping his cousin acclimate to a new world. Say what you will about how admirable Superman is for doing what he did but Clark didn't agree. Clark thinks it was a short sighted, arrogant, and self indulgent method Superman decided on. Not to mention not caring about family, which is important to Clark.

Clark has all this Krypton tech available, he was able to use his abilities to find gold as an initial investment, buy out his parents farm, and start a company. And he had plans to slowly uplift earth's tech and knowledge over the next fifty years. Superman could have done all of this too, but he chose to go around only using his physical abilities to stop crime.

If Clark decides in the future that crime needs to be fought, he's going to have his companies donate resources to the relevant police agencies. Maybe not as personally satisfying as punching a bank thief out, but so much more effective, and Clark wasn't going to become some vigilante hero of petty theft.

There were major threats out there that required big guns to keep the actual world alive. Clark decided that's where he'd focus his attention on. So instead wasting his time with nickel and dime thugs, he'd train himself up to be able to take out alien armies and threats like Darkseid. So aside from training to fight gods, he'd spend his precious time with family and friends, and building up his business empire (which was mostly done by Jorv).

Clark and Jorv had also created a second Fortress, this one set up in Antarctica. They had several bunker bases set up around the world. These bases enabled Jorv to have access to pretty much any information put online.

One of the things that Jorv noticed was the abundant evidence that there were many groups, or secret societies, around the world that never put their information on the net. They were blank spots in Jorv's information gathering that had great influence in everyday life for the people of the planet. From the way that businesses ran, to the policies that governments created and enforced, there was almost no aspect of life that wasn't influenced by the secret societies.

This made Clark once more cognizant of the difference between having watched a few T.V. shows and actual knowledge of the world he found himself in. The T.V. shows had all these villains and opponents for Superman to fight that were out in the open, and obvious. The Superman of comics and T.V. shows always followed a strict moral code. After a few conflicts, the secret societies no doubt figured out how Superman operated, and adjusted their operations to account for his interference (assuming the societies actually existed in other Superman verses). And when Superman was satisfied he was "making a difference" in the world then he wasn't digging deeper to find out the cause of all those problems.

Clark could only assume, if the secret societies existed in those worlds, then they loved how simple Superman was to deal with. Just create a diversion, like a silly super villain of the week, and Superman would never know what you were doing in the shadows.

What about the other super heroes? Surely they would find evidence? What about Batman? He's the super detective! Well, Batman as Bruce Wayne was new money, nouveau riche. He wouldn't be included in the secret societies. Batman relies a lot on his tech, and so he'd never get a hint of their existence by searching and hacking. The only reason Jorv got a hint was because he's an advanced A.I. that is so far ahead of Earth tech that he was able to "see" the distinct black holes in his information gathering (hacking). As smart as Batman was in comics, he was still just a human. A paranoid human that likely wouldn't trust any A.I.s.

And Clark is speculating a bit here, but maybe it has to do with magic. Clark knows there's magic around, and while Batman is smart, he's not a mage, and he doesn't like magic. 'Probably because he's unable to use it and is ignorant of much of it.' Clark thought. 'What else could get such an intelligent man who makes use of anything he could, to state that he doesn't like magic? His inability to utilize said tool, of course. If Batman could use magic, he'd doubtlessly be singing in his little bat heart, "I loooooove magic! It's so OP, haxxors!" '

Speaking of Batman, Clark had Jorv keep an eye on the Waynes. Whenever they went out to the movies, Clark kept a close eye on them, and was able to prevent the death of Bruce's parents. Clark knows he may be preventing The Bruce from becoming The Batman, but really, how much of a dick would he have to be to not save someone's parents just so the dude would become a crime fighter? Clark decided to try out a different way. He dressed up as a spandex "superhero" and flashily saved them, giving a nice speech about good men not standing aside. This way the choice of becoming something more is left up to Bruce, and he's not driven to it by his parent's death. There's a good chance that this world may never have Batman, but it may have an equally driven, but mentally balanced superhero detective. That was a good trade off in Clark's mind.

* * *

Clark decided that until he can get more intel on the (probably) magic societies that were giving Jorv conniption fits, he would just monitor them for now. Which led to an interesting discovery by the reported, and not acted upon, death count in Sunnydale, California.

Sunnydale, the (apparently not) fictional town that was the location of the Hellmouth in the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Hellmouth was a dimensional weak spot between this dimension and a hell dimension. Hell energies leaked through and attracted all kinds of supernatural predators that dropped by to enjoy the human buffet. And something about the Hellmouth (the hell energy or spells) caused the people to make up lame cover stories or outright ignore the death count and the supernatural.

Your High School has an obituary page? That's totally natural, on the Hell Mouth. The jocks went on a rampage and killed everyone at their party? Meh, why are you even talking about that? Oh, you think it's weird that said jocks are walking around the school after dark? Who are you and why are you even talking to me, dweeb!? Pshaw!

Thinking about what he knew of the show, there was one interesting possibility that he'd like to take advantage of to increase his abilities and science knowledge. That is the Halloween episode that occurred in 1997. In the episode a chaos mage by the name of Ethan Rayne set up a costume shop and then cast a spell that turned everyone into the costume they got from the shop; thereby spreading chaos as all the munchkin monsters ran amok.

When Clark looked through his Krypton knowledge database when the idea to take advantage of the Halloween spell occurred to him, he found that there was no information or technology for time travel. Apparently, one of the most influential scientists of Krypton had a very bad experience with time travel, and thus put up the harshest injunctions for anyone who played around with time. Which was a shame, because if they had time travel tech, even if the planet was doomed, they could still have saved the majority of the people from death.

Clark decided that the first character that he'd like to mine for information is one Bulma Trunks. She comes from the Dragon Ball universe, and she is a genius. At age 16 she created a radar that could track the unique energy given off by the dragon balls (gather all 7 dragon balls and the luck dragon, err, the dragon Shenron will grant your wish). In one of her futures she was able to create a time travel machine to go back and warn her friends about the dangers they would face, so they could prevent an android apocalypse.

She and her father built space ships, gravity chambers, and the capsules that have pocket dimensions to store large objects in. According to Clark's theories, it's highly probable she would have analyzed the Sensu beans. Sensu beans were a magic bean that once eaten, heal all injuries sustained and totally refill the person's energy. So the people in her dimension could train to the edge of death and then eat a bean to recover. There was no "theoretical upper limit" for them as long as Sensu Beans were available to save them from crazy death training. She is the one "normal", unpowered, character that stuck by her home galaxy's strongest fighters, and her tech has been useful throughout the whole series.

Despite being a "normal" human (what a laugh, Bulma is such a genius that the word normal hardly applies to her) she was able to hang out with literal gods. She was the Tony Stark equivalent of the Dragon Ball universe. If she had access to vibranium, uru, and adamantium, it remains to be seen if she wouldn't have created a suit that made her the Queen of the Galaxy, like super ironman.

Bulma is the one character that Clark hopes will provide him a lot of knowledge, and the ability to create a time travel device. If she doesn't help him in everything, but just provides a time travel machine, then he'll count it as a win. Then he can go back and repeat the day with another character costume to gain more knowledge or power. Clark would especially like to gain the knowledge of the fighters in her dimension. Some of them were powerful enough to literally destroy galaxies. And their fighting techniques are orders of magnitude better than what he has now.

And while he's at it, he could provide better costumes for the rest of the so called Scooby Gang that hangs out with the Slayer in Sunnydale. They could definitely benefit from increased abilities with all the vampires and demons going after them.

Clark called up Jorv to get started on some preparations. Despite not having time travel tech, the Kryptonians do have time dilation tech. So Jorv sets up six warehouses, each stocked with a year supply of food and entertainment, with time dilation devices so the one night could be stretched into a year. In each warehouse is an advanced computer with the Kryptonian database loaded onto it, as well as a large surplus of metals, plastics, glass, and all other materials needed for advanced tech.

By the beginning of October 1997 Clark and Jorv had everything ready to go for his attempt to mine fictional characters of their knowledge and skills. One last thing to do.

Clark dressed up as a delivery boy and affected an airhead surfer attitude. He strode up to the door of Ethan's Halloween shop, and knocked on the door.

"Yes, may I help you?" A British individual stated after opening the delivery door.

"Yeah, man. Thanks. I got a delivery here from a few different people for reserved costumes to be picked up before Halloween." Clark drawled.

"You must have the wrong place." Ethan stated, about to shut the door.

"You sure, man? Cause I swear this is a Halloween costume shop." Clark looked around at the costumes pointedly. "They pointed it out to me down the street." Clark picked up the shipping receipts. "Yeah, I've got a costume ordered by an Andrew Wiggins; two ordered by an Owen Pitt; four by a Rupert Giles; and three by a Paks Dorthansdotter, weird name that, to be delivered to Party Town for pick up on or before Halloween."

"Wait, did you say Rupert Giles?" At Clark's nod, Ethan smiled beamingly. "Why didn't you say so? I'll sign for them."

"Sounds good, man. The phone numbers of the people the costumes go to are on the receipt. Be sure to call them to let them know their costumes are ready. They said something about having a nice stress free night for once. I guess Halloween is kinda fun that way. Anyway here you are my man. I'm out."

Clark hopped back in his delivery truck and drove off; leaving Ethan standing there with the boxes the costumes were in.

The next day Jorv received the expected phone calls as a reminder to pick up his costumes. Which was thoughtful of Ethan. Even though he picked up the order meant for Party Town because he wanted to mess with Giles, he at least was helpful in making sure Clark's costumes got back to him.

On the 30th of October, Jorv sent several HFRs to pick up the costumes and stage them in the corresponding warehouse with the HFR that would act as an assistant/cook/cleaner for the duration of the time dilation. The television was set up with a recording Clark made of himself proposing the trade between himself and the entities that will possess him. If they spend some time recording their knowledge and tech designs into his computer, they will have access to his tech database for the duration of the time dilation. If they chose not to accept the deal, they could end the time dilation at any time and wait for the spell to finish, sending them back to their bodies. Quid pro quo.

The next day found Clark in the afternoon in the first warehouse, waiting for the spell to take effect. He was dressed in drag as Bulma Trunks.

"And remember Jorv," Clark ordered, "There must absolutely not be pictures or video of me in drag getting to anyone I know."

"Yes Kal-El." Jorv replied.

'Did that A.I. just snicker at me?' Clark wondered before the spell took effect.

* * *

Xander, ignored by his best friends in place of a princess dress wandered over to the discount bin to see if he could get a toy gun to finish up his soldier costume. At least one thing about this day should go right, right? Being emasculated by your female friend is something of a downer day.

From several feet away he can see the perfect plastic rifle sitting in the bin, just waiting for him. Out of nowhere, a little boy runs up and grabs the gun.

"Look mom, I got the last rifle!" He cheerfully exclaims, running back to his mother.

"Great. Add more onto this day, why don't you." Xander grumbled to himself.

"Hello, how are you." A sudden voice behind him caused Xander to jump and definitely not squeak. Nope, he was too manly to squeek.

"Gah, don't do that!" He wouldn't do anything as unmanly as a squeak.

"Terribly sorry, lad." Ethan paused, a gleam in his eye. "Say, you wouldn't happen to be Alexander Harris, now would you?"

Suddenly suspicious, Xander stared at the British man. "And who's asking?"

Holding out his hand to shake, "The name's Ethan. This is my store, and if you are indeed Mr. Harris" Xander winces at the unintentional comparison to his drunkard of a father "then it's good that you got my message to come in to pick up your costume. We close in another half hour for the day, and if you came any later, you would have been unable to pick up your costume."

"Wait, message? What do you mean, message?" Xander is confused.

"Oh, dear. I called yesterday about an order that was delivered on behalf of one Rupert Giles. A Tony Harris assured me you would get the message about picking up your costumes today."

Ethan ignored the muttered, 'drunk' from Xander.

"It seems that this Mr. Giles left a note with the four costumes. One for you, one for a Buffy Summer, one Dawn Summers, and a Willow Rosenberg. I wasn't able to get a hold of the others, and was glad I was able to leave a message for you, but it seems the message was waylaid. Would you care to pick up all four, if you can deliver them, that is?"

"Sure, but what was the message that G-man left with the order?"

"Oh, just that the costumes are compliments of him, and that he hopes that your group can have a nice stress free night for once. His words, not mine. So, about picking up the costumes?"

"Yeah, sure. One sec though." Xander turned to where Buffy and Willow were. "Buffy, Willow! G-man ordered us some costumes. Come check them out!"

Buffy had an indecisive look on her face. "I don't know, I kinda had my heart set on that dress."

Xander, not wanting her to dress up for Deadboy, urged her to at least look at the costume to see if she liked it. When Buffy opened up her box, there was a gorgeous dress, much better than the one hanging on the model dummy. She immediately accepted.

They took the boxes off to get dressed up for Halloween.

When Xander took out his costume, a note fell out of the box. The note described the details of the Master Chief John-117 Spartan Mjolnir Mark VII Armor costume. The brief summary of John's life impressed the hell out of Xander, and made him feel connected to the fictional soldier. He felt just as strongly about his war with the supernatural, especially vampires, that John did about the Covenant.

* * *

Buffy didn't pay any attention to the note in her box until the next morning. If she had, she would know that the costume character she went as was of Lady Vin Crucial; the most successful slayer known in history. Lady Vin didn't follow the agenda the Watcher council set for their slayers. She created her own organization that watched her back. Her organization gave her all the back up and modern weaponry she could need. She lived to the age of 74, a grandmother many times over, and died in her sleep. In history, the organization she made was eventually subsumed by the Watchers Council, and as a result there are two factions in the watchers council. First is the "Traditionalist"; who thinks that slayers need to do their slaying on their own with no support. The other is the "Supportists"; who realize that slayers would survive longer if they had backup. The "Supportists" are those that want to help the slayers in any way they can. Unfortunately the "Supportist" faction are chained down by politics and money by the "Traditionalist" faction. Buffy ended up with a halfway watcher. He was motivated by the "Supportist" faction, but trained by the "Traditionalist" faction to undermine her at her most crucial period in her life. The Cruciamentum.

The day after Halloween, when Buffy reviewed the memories she had and learned of the Cruciamentum, she didn't know what to think of Giles. What he did in the future would determine what path she took in regards to him. She took a wait and see attitude.

* * *

Willow opened up her costume, and saw it was a Romani ghost costume. The Lady it was based on was Lizzy Kalderash. The history of Lizzy shook Willow's certainty in so many things. Lizzy and her husband were magic practicioners of the Kalderash clan. They married young, had food, clothes, and a daughter and three sons. Life was good. But then a vampire killed and drained their beloved, youngest, and only daughter.

Willow put on the costume. She didn't think she'd live through the experience.

Her husband was consumed with rage, and the desire to enact vengeance on the vampire bloomed in his heart. He started delving into dark magics; he became addicted and consumed with vengeance.

She pled with him to turn away and find a different path to vengeance. He didn't listen. He cast a most horrible curse.

He tore a soul out of its eternal rest and chained the soul in a demonically possessed corpse; to suffer and cause the vampire demon to suffer.

Her husband was changed after that. He slowly grew mad, addicted to the dark aspect of magic.

In his madness, he slew his beloved wife and three boys.

When he came out of the madness and saw what he'd done, he killed himself. He was too ashamed of what he'd done to continue on.

Willow woke up from the spell that made her live the life of Lizzy. Willow now knew, first hand, the rage and pain needed to cast the spell to ensoul Angel. Willow now knew the effects becoming so dark had done on the family. She also knew what horrors a vampire named Angelus had committed, and rushed to the bathroom to throw up.

That was what she'd been supporting Buffy to date? She was sick for quite a while.

She'd also seen the ensuing darkness rising in the spell caster husband of Lizzy. She'd seen the madness. How could she let that taint her own magic?

She couldn't, and wouldn't let people bargain with deities without representation. Thank goodness the Halloween spell had shown her a path to avoid.

* * *

The odd thing about Dawn Summers is she didn't start out life as a person in the normal way. Originally, she was The Key, a bundle of dimensional energy that acts as a key between dimensions. In the year 2000 some monks cast a spell to make Dawn a real person. But the spell was so comprehensive, added to the dimensional energies of The Key, it made Dawn a real person from birth. Which means that while Dawn may be an artificial person, the spell reached back in time and created her at the time of her birth, giving memories to those around her of the pregnancy and birth. Dawn was never a fake person. She'd always existed, from the moment of her birth.

Dawn, Buffy's 14 year old sister, opened up her costume that Xander had brought for her. She glanced at the note, seeing that it was the costume of Deona, a portal mage. Listed was a number of feats that Deona had accomplished. She was always able to escape danger. She was capable of leading an army to its destination, or confusing the path of an enemy army. Dawn thought it was a pretty cool power. And the outfit showed off her developing figure. She wore it with happiness.

The day after Halloween, Dawn felt the additional knowledge from being Deona scrunched into her brain. She wasn't every going to have to worry about being kidnapped or caught again. She may allow herself to be caught by Xander, she'd had a crush on him for a while now. Or maybe he wasn't up to her perfection. Time will tell.

* * *

Clark groaned as he opened his eyes the day after Halloween. He was lying in the bed at the warehouse. It felt like memories were being forced into his mind. He rubbed his temples with his hands, then froze.

His hands and face felt different from normal. He looked at his hands. They looked very feminine. He jumped out of bed, but his balance was off and he staggered, falling to the ground. His long blue-green hair curtained in front of his face.

Long hair. Blue-green hair. That's not right.

He rushed to the bathroom. In the mirror was an image of a very gorgeous woman. A woman that in another world goes by the name Bulma Trunks.

He reached up and felt the weight on his chest. Yup, he's got boobs. Very nice, perky boobs. He looked down. Felt in between his legs. He was definitely missing a male appendage.

He was supposed to revert back to being Clark after the spell ended. Why was he a still a woman?

Clark groaned out loud. Superman was really vulnerable to magic. Obviously with his vulnerability and the chaos magic, it made the change permanent.

He tried his abilities as a Kryptonian. He couldn't fly, or move fast. He felt…normal.

No.

He refused to believe he was stuck like this.

He ran outside the warehouse, into the sunlight. He could feel his empty reserves start to fill up from the sunlight.

So he was still Kryptonian, just a girl now.

His energy reserves must have been added to the spell and with his vulnerability to magic it made him a girl.

No, he refused to believe this was permanent. He could fix this. Taking deep breaths, he stopped and thought.

Now that he wasn't freaking out as much, he noticed all the memories that were crowding for his attention. It seems he kept all the memories Bulma had of her life. As he went through Bulma's memories he couldn't seem to control his emotional responses.

Well, now he knew what a woman's period was like. He also knew what masturbating as a woman was like. Oh no. Sex with a man. Urkk. He knew from Bulma's memory that it was enjoyable, and she certainly found Vegeta attractive. But no way in hell was he going down that rabbit hole.

Maybe a woman with a strap on, but definitely not a man.

No! Clark! Focus!

How to fix this?

He looked around. Okay. I've got a time travel machine that Bulma and Jorv built. I remember all about it, how to build it, how to pilot it. I'm going to recharge my solar battery, then I'm going back a couple days, and I'm going to dress up in a man's costume. Preferably one who has magic, so I can turn back into a man, and gain some resistance to magic at the same time.

I'd already picked Harry Potter. This is good. This will work. Everything is set up in the next warehouse. Breathe.

Clark got into his time machine, and winked out of the present to two days prior.


	2. Chapter 2

Clark, in the time machine that Bulma and Jorv had built for him, winked into being above the warehouses he'd had Jorv set up for Halloween on October 30th. Clark quickly stowed away the time machine in one of the unused warehouses.

It was still early morning, the sun was just rising. The previous run through of this day Clark had played least in sight and purposefully didn't check around the warehouses to see if he was successful in getting a time machine. He didn't want to jinx his efforts in case he didn't find anything.

So until Clark had woken up after Halloween, he'd no idea that he had succeeded in getting a time machine. He had no idea of the mess he'd dropped himself in. He had no solar battery charge empowering his now female Kryptonian physique.

Clark took a moment to slow down and think about what he needed to accomplish. Use the time machine to become male again. Okay, he's in the past. He just needs to get in costume and wait for the spell to take effect. His gender already changed once from the spell. It would work again. The only other effect was...losing his charged up solar energy.

That could prove to be a problem. Clark had no idea of the exact mechanics of the spell (it was chaos magic after all), but he bet that the energy he'd stored up from the sun had had quite the effect on the spell. It was used to make the change to female permanent. So it would make sense he'd need at least an equally large energy reserve to turn him back to being a male…

Looking over at his time machine, he realized another something. He might only have one more chance at using this chaos spell this Halloween to fix this gender problem he suddenly had. The more attempts he took to go back in time to make use of a chaos spell, the higher the chance something "chaotic" would happen to destroy his time machine and keep him stuck like this if it didn't work the first time.

Especially here on the Hellmouth. There were nosy monsters that liked to poke their noses into everything. Like the mayor, who is an over 100 year old sorcerer trying to ritually turn himself into a demonic Old One.

"This might be more complicated to fix than I originally thought." Clark admitted to himself. "I should use the time machine to go back at least 10 years, and really work on getting sun to charge up my battery. Once I get enough of a charge I can easily get enough money to live for the ten years. I can change location based on the seasons to maximize sun. And I've got to lay low and stay away from locations I've been while growing up. Well, it's not like I've got to try really hard to disguise myself, since I'm a woman now."

Deciding to put action to thought, Clark got in his time machine before anything could derail his plan. He set the target time to early morning 31 October 1987 to attempt to avoid any problems.

When Clark arrived and landed by the warehouses, he noticed it was still dark. 'Very early morning then.' Clark realized. He landed the time machine next to a warehouse that didn't seem to have much traffic and got out. He was contemplating what to do with his time machine for the moment, when a mocking voice spoke out from behind him, startling him.

"Well now, what's a sweet thing like you doing here, honey?"

Spinning around, Clark saw a six foot male dressed in 60s style clothes standing several feet away, eyeing her like Clark was a steak. The males face looked disfigured, and fangs jutted from his smiling mouth.

Vampire.

Clark cursed himself. He'd forgotten he was on the freaking Hellmouth, he was only five foot six at the moment, and barely had any solar energy stored. He was so used to being invulnerable; he hadn't even considered having situational awareness.

Clark quickly looked around for a weapon. The only thing he could see that would be useful was some wooden pallets lying by the docking bay of the warehouse.

Clark looked back at the vampire, to see him licking his lips in anticipation. Disgusting.

"Well, good sir, you see-"

And Clark made a break for it, running towards the wooden pallets he was hoping to use as a stake. Two things were in his favor, the vampire not expecting him to run mid sentence, and his hour of solar energy charge making him slightly faster than an ordinary human, which the creep was not expecting.

Clark made it to the pallets. Grabbing one of the boards while standing on the rest of the pallet and keeping an eye on the approaching vampire, he yanked with all his might. The rusted nails groaned as the board separated from the pallet, just in time. He rammed the blunt end of the wood into the vampire's eyes, which the vampire was totally not expecting. The vampire had seen the wood and expected Clark to use it like a stake, thrusting it at his chest, so was unprepared to get clocked in the eyes, blinding him.

Near human strength would have a hard time driving a plank of wood into a vampire's heart, especially when said vampire could still move and struggle. So Clark proceed to beat the blind vampire with no mercy, first breaking its legs so it couldn't run, then proceeded to beat it unconscious. During the beating, the plank of wood splintered down the center, giving Clark a pointed piece of wood.

With minimal hesitation Clark staked the vampire. This was a human body/corpse and despite all Clark's tough talk/thoughts about "taking down" threats to humanity, he'd never actually killed anything before, or done something as viscerally squicky as shoving a stake into a corpse/vampire's heart before.

After the vampire dusted, Clark started to kick himself for not robbing the vampire before he dusted him, only to stop himself seconds later. Despite being down, the vampire, while still "alive" was actually very dangerous. Clark is as vulnerable as the next girl to being grabbed and drained dry. He'll save any foolhardy actions until he's either more invulnerable or actually trained in combat, take downs, and restraining bodies to chance robbing undead.

Looking around, Clark noticed it was starting to get light. He probably had another half hour before the sun peeked over the horizon. In the meantime, he got himself a couple more boards, and put his back to a wall so he couldn't be jumped from behind while waiting for the sun to fully rise.

While waiting for the sun, Clark started to plan his actions out. Looking around the yard, he noticed several flatbed trucks parked across the lot that were perfect for his use. There was no way he was going to leave his time machine behind while getting away from the Hellmouth. First he checked how much gas each truck had, and chose the one with the fullest tank. He found a toolbox in one of the other trucks, and moved it to his chosen truck.

He moved his time machine to the bed of his chosen truck and covered it with a tarp after strapping it down with the ratcheting straps present. Breaking in to the warehouses took some work with a crowbar, but he was able to find a couple barrels of fuel and loaded them on the flatbed with a forklift, strapping them down too.

Looking in the trucks glove box, he found a road map that he followed out of town heading south in his stolen truck. He made it to the other side of Los Angeles by noon, driving with the window down and his arm hanging out, enjoying the feel of the sun.

On his way to San Diego, he found a likely side road that seemed deserted enough for his purpose. Pulling off, Clark busted out the toolbox and began dismantling the time machine. It was too conspicuous. Someone would make note of it if it was anywhere in a city and probably steal it. He didn't have funds to rent a warehouse at the moment, and there was no way he'd leave it in a remote location for someone to find and relocate.

With Bulma's memories he could always make another time machine if he really needed one. For now though, it was best he destroy it so no one can pull a Biff Tannen on it.

So after pulling the machine apart, he burned what could burn with the gas. The rest of the trip to San Diego was spent littering the highway with assorted other parts. If there was anyone out there who could find and rebuild the time machine after that, well, they could likely build their own time machine, so Clark felt it was a moot point.

Arriving in San Diego, Clark spent some time with a phone book looking up homeless shelters where he could stay for the time being. He was afraid someone in the regular homeless shelter might get handsy, try to turn him into their girlfriend, or "recommend" her to a thug or pimp. Which would then just devolve into violence; 'cause there was no way he was putting up with that shit.

So he found a battered women's shelter he decided he'd go to. It was the best place for an 18 year old "Claire" to go to find shelter where they won't ask too many questions or try to take advantage of her. Clark felt vaguely guilty for taking advantage of the women like that, so he promised himself when he got his powers back to snuff he'd find some money to donate to their shelter, to repay them.

Clark drove the stolen truck to one of the beaches in San Diego, wiping down all her prints before she departed for the shelter.

The shelter was very helpful. At first they were doubtful as to her story of being homeschooled and never having been registered in the system, until they ran her prints and found nothing, not even hospital records. So they were helpful in registering her as Claire Smith.

They found her accommodations at a sort of halfway house for battered women, where she had a strict curfew and the law laid down on just who she could bring back to visit. No boyfriends allowed. No drugs. Clark was completely fine with the rules. There was no way he'd pick up dudes, let alone bring them back to a place with emotionally fragile women.

The next couple of years "Claire" worked at a beachside concession stand that let her spend the majority of her time in the sun. She shot down quite a few punks that thought just because she colored her hair that she was an easy mark for the drug/sex/party scene.

She did make friends with some of the college girls that hung on the beach. Some of them really needed Claire as a wing woman when they went partying, or they'd have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous horn dogs. Clark's time as a gorgeous woman was definitely negatively affecting his opinion of the male species. Well, at least the type of males that hang at the beach and party. He figures the ambitious and or decent family men stay away from that scene, so it's not fair to judge them all by the dregs.

She met quite a few people through the shelter that she volunteered help at on a weekly basis. Some women were able to make clean breaks with their pasts, and gain a new life. Some just kept going back to the men who abused them. Clark didn't understand the mindset of those who would go back to the abuse, but he finally decided to classify abuse in his mind as a kind of drug. Some people, even though they know it's bad for them, keep going back. A lot of people though, change for the better and lead new lives. It just depends on the person.

Claire was ecstatic when she was finally able to fly again after a couple of years, even if she couldn't quite break the sound barrier at first. She found some sunken treasure that she hadn't picked up years ago in the future as Clark, and was finally able to quit her concession stand job and move into a nice house. She still spent a lot of time at the beach, soaking up rays.

She'd been learning Spanish the last year, so she also started making trips to different South American countries to sample the cuisine that people had told her about, while meeting people and learning the culture.

She then started branching out, language and trip wise. She started spending time across the pacific, three to six day trips, twice a month, while spending a year learning the language of the focus country. She started in Russia, moving to China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and finally India before her ten years was over. She loved traveling to new places, learning languages and trying new foods. She decided she'd continue the practice when she was Clark again.

By the beginning of October 1997, Clark was once again in Sunnydale, renting an apartment while keeping an eye on things discretely in town. He found it easy to follow the Scooby Gang, namely Buffy, Willow, and Xander during their night time activities. They never looked up. Even if they did, they wouldn't see him with how high he was hovering.

It was a good thing he did, since he found more than one occasion to help Willow and Xander out secretly so they didn't suffer ambush from the Vampires.

Clark also noticed the last of the preparations made by Jorv for the Halloween warehouses. He still hadn't made up his mind whether or not he'd attempt to build another time travel machine for a repeat of Halloween. It would be the perfect time to do so, while his solar battery was exhausted and there was little chance of powering the spell to change him again. He would just have to employ the time dilation to spend time building another machine-

Clark paused. Thought long and hard about what he was thinking.

He face palmed.

Clark could only admit that he had panicked 10 years ago, and wasn't thinking. He could have totally set up some mirrors and cleverly used the time dilation to give himself the needed charge in the space of a month, max, instead of living as a woman in the past for a decade.

'Well, it's not a total loss.' Clark mused to himself. 'I've got an alternate identity that Jorv can make an HFR for, I've learned half a dozen languages, traveled the world, and have had lots of hot lesbian sex. College girls like to explore their identity. That's definitely in the plus column. If it works and I can get turned back into the man I was, I might just try one more Halloween costume, with some of those Z fighters. Their fighting techniques would definitely come in handy. On the other hand, I feel like I'm already pushing the limits here, for some reason.'

Clark paused his packing in preparation to move to the warehouse later that day. He considered what he knew about chaos gods, the Hellmouth, curses to keep people's lives interesting, and his own experience of the last decade.

'Something tells me I've been messed with already here as payment for the knowledge I got from Bulma. I panicked a little too hard when going to the past. Then there was the vampire that panicked me again and made me decide to leave town fast. Living the past decade as a woman would be a good joke on the "Man of Steel".'

Clark finished packing, and headed for the warehouse. When he arrived, he immediately dressed in the Harry Potter costume, applying the lightning bolt scar. He left the glasses off though. He was hoping to get a Harry Potter that didn't have poor vision.

Clark double checked that everything was in working order. The video explanation was primed. The HFR stood ready, the computer was booted with all needed information, and ready to record anything Harry Potter decided to trade.

'No, I don't think I'll be trying this again. Provided it works to turn me back into a man, that is.' Clark decided. 'I somehow don't think I'll get away with abusing this too hard. I'll just have to figure out how to maximize my fighting potential on my own.'

After that final thought, the spell activated.

* * *

Harry Potter was a kid who was unfocused. He'd learned early on in his life with his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin that his life was filled with Things Not To Do. He always learned these painful lessons from experience. Don't ask for birthday presents, freaks don't deserve presents. Don't ask for more food, you should be grateful for what we give you. Don't do better than our precious Duddykins in school, obviously you're cheating.

Don't do this. Don't do that. The list always changed too. Sometimes things he'd always done were particularly annoying to his Uncle, especially on days when he didn't land a sale, and he was punished again. So the list was ever changing. But if there was one constant, that Harry learned, was that he was always at fault, he was never good enough. And he'd be stuck in it for at least 18 years.

So Harry led a very unfocused life, just waiting for time to pass. The only thing he could put effort into were chores. Boring chores that took almost no attention span. So, he drifted and dreamed. Until one day a letter came for him. Over and over the letter came, because it wasn't being answered.

His relatives were terrified of that letter. They binned it, they tore it up, and they burned it. But they were still afraid. And that…was a good thing, in Harry's mind. It was the first time he'd ever felt that maybe one day he'd be able to leave the influence of his relatives. And Hagrid showed him the way. "Yer a wizard, Harry."

But despite being shown the way, Harry really had no idea of just how to walk that path. And his problem was exacerbated by the first friend he made on the train. Ron Weasley was so forceful in his opinions, that it triggered the trained reflex in Harry to unthinkingly do what he was told. So even though he wanted to talk more to the smart girl and make friends on the train, he waited too long, and she was gone.

It was even easier to make the decision to reject Malfoy's handshake. That's what Ron expected, and Draco reminded him of Dudley in his bullying way.

So Harry was all set to continue the path he'd followed for the last ten years, of drifting in the wake of Ron Weasley. Until Halloween happened, and Harry realized, now, more than ever, he needed to make his own decisions. And he saved the smart girl from the troll. She became his friend, and derailed the lazy path he'd been all set to follow in Ron's wake.

Hermione's proactive approach to life and her simple joy in learning was something Harry admired. But it was still difficult to break the conditioning he'd endured the last ten years of his life.

Until he faced off against the specter of Voldemort possessing poor professor Quirrell. Something of his Mother's Protection remained, and burned the unicorn blood cursed body of Quirrell to ashes. The thing that changed was that when the specter of Voldemort passed through Harry's body in an attempt to leach some magic, it happened to pass through the Horcrux in Harry's head. And the soul fragment attached itself to the rest of Voldemort on the way out.

There was no longer a Horcrux in Harry's head, but left behind was all the knowledge of the Dark Lord Voldemort up until he tried to kill Harry as a baby.

On the outside it looked like Harry had passed out due to exhaustion and burn wounds. But inside Harry's mind, he was busy learning from Tom Riddle. Luckily the first lesson Harry learned was occlumency, and how to order his mind and memories. So Harry spent the next couple of days unconscious in a meditation trance.

First he went through Riddle's memories. He saw how Slytherin treated a supposed muggleborn. He saw the politics and jockeying behind the scenes. He saw how their games were played. And he realized that for all that Malfoy acted brash and bold, when he caused Harry to lose his temper, it was Malfoy that came off looking like a manipulator to the other Slytherins. Which is why Draco kept doing it.

He saw how Riddle lived his life, striving to learn everything he could about magic and magical society. And Harry learned everything that Riddle learned. But the greatest benefit to Harry was the ability to experience, second hand, how Riddle strove to change his lot in life. The desire that burned in him, the shear need, which was required to make changes in his life.

And with that new found desire also running in his veins, Harry turned his attention to his own memories. With a new outlook on life and increased magical knowledge, Harry saw something he'd had no conscious knowledge of previously. There were times, many times, early on in his life where he tried to rebel, to fight against what his relatives made of his life, and then the next day, he was placid, unrebelious.

So he focused in on those times, and he noticed the discrepancy in his attitude and memories. He'd been Obliviated many times.

With a delicate touch, he teased the memory knots loose, and saw his unedited life for the first time.

He saw the many times he ran away from his relative's house. And he was caught by Dumbledore and his order. There was twice Molly Weasley even caught him, fed him, then was Obliviated by Dumbledore before Dumbledore Obliviated Harry.

There were many times he did his best at school, believing rightly that one day he'd be out from under the Dursley thumb and he needed good grades to get scholarships to pay for schooling. But he was beaten so badly by his uncle that Dumbledore had to bring Madame Pomfrey to heal him. Then Dumbledore would Obliviate her, put compulsions on Harry to not do well in school, and Obliviate him.

And Harry realized something else. He'd been going through his entire first year with the absolute belief that Dumbledore cared greatly for him. Even though he'd never interacted or spent time with the man, he'd believed that he had the best of intentions for Harry.

Compulsion charms. Likely loyalty potions too.

Why?

The memory of Riddle provided the answer.

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies._

A prophecy "overheard" by Riddle's spy, Snape. Suddenly the reason why Dumbledore indulged Snape so much made sense. Dumbledore was using Snape as a spy of sorts. Dumbledore wanted Harry, the boy of prophecy, to be easy to mold and direct.

Harry felt so much anger for Dumbledore and his manipulations that made his life hell. Then more memories from Riddle caught his mind. The prominent position the Potter family once held in Wizard society. But their prominence waned when Riddle killed Harry's grandparents, and James Potter was seen as a lackey to Dumbledore.

Riddle's own experience of wanting to be accepted and honored in Wizard society influenced Harry's perception. Harry's family was once Wizard nobility, rich and respected. But between two wizards, Riddle and Dumbledore, all that was left of his family was one beaten and abused orphan, manipulated to be some kind of weapon or lackey.

Harry was livid.

He vowed that he would one day restore the Ancient and Noble family of Potter to prominence. He would destroy these two bastards that dared to attack his family and destroy society. Both of them, Dumbledore and Riddle lusted for power and influence they didn't earn. So they tore down others.

Being able to compare the first year of Riddle with Harry's first year at Hogwarts, Harry was able to see how dumbed down the curriculum was. How there were social experiments and control methods implemented by Dumbledore to ensure that the students held him on a pedestal as the greatest wizard since Merlin.

When Harry finally woke up in the infirmary, it was a totally different person to the Harry that had gone to protect the stone. He knew who and what he was. He had goals and direction in life. Harry was no longer an unfocused kid.

He was an almost 12 year old with the full magical and political knowledge of a Slytherin Dark Lord. His hatred of Riddle ensured he wouldn't follow in that bastard's footsteps. But at the same time, there was no way he would attempt to follow the supposed "light" lord Dumbledore, who he only had contempt and hatred for.

He was firmly set on the grey, practical path. He knew power was important, but he also knew that most people don't operate based on power. He had the memories of his first year and a half of life with his parents. He'd watched his parents sacrifice themselves to try to save him. He knew what kind of people they were, and he knew love was no illusion, not if it motivates people to act in such a manner.

But it was important that he continue to hide in plain sight. He couldn't give Dumbledore a chance to Obliviate him and take everything that he'd learned from him. So he continued to play the timid boy, awed by the grandfatherly powerful headmaster.

Once he arrived back at the Dursleys, he used wand less compulsions to make them ignore him. Harry hated the Dursleys, but now wasn't the time to act impulsively. As long as they left him alone, even forcibly through spells, he'd leave them alone. His aunt was his mother's sister, she was family. So even though they didn't get along, he wouldn't act against them.

Harry started making plans. He needed to finish going through Riddles memories to ensure he understood his enemy. Riddle really had started going insane after he'd made his Horcruxes. And the more Horcruxes he created, the worse he got.

Harry needed to gather the Horcruxes. But before he could do that, he needed a way to practice and train his magic. He had all of Riddle's memories, but his magic largely lay untrained. Like a muscle that hadn't had exercise.

Harry visited Gringotts, to accept his heritage, and see what was left.

He learned that Dumbledore had been plundering his money. Many of the businesses the Potter family once owned were sold to fund Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix. Harry didn't have much, compared to what his family once owned. He would build it back up, somehow.

There was one property that the Potters still owned that would suit his plan to train during the summer. He spent his days training there, before going back to the Dursleys to sleep to keep up the illusion that he was keeping in his place.

When Hermione's family returned from vacation Harry went to visit his friend. He checked her for compulsion spells and potions, and found many. Obviously the friend of his weapon needed to be guided by Dumbledore too.

After getting Hermione cleaned up, she joined him in his training so that she could protect herself. Hermione's strange dichotomy of strong feelings of justice and a willingness to break the rules while at the same time almost worshipping authority now made sense as it was a result of her sense of self and identity clashing with the loyalty potions. Hermione was naturally indignant that she had been usurped by the establishment. Harry made potion detection rings that would alert them to any loyalty potions or the like.

When Dobby showed up Harry recognizes him as the Malfoy elf. He knows how useful House Elves are, and how unhappy Dobby is with the Malfoys, so Harry decides to recruit him from the Malfoys when he has a chance.

Convincing Dobby not to keep Harry from going back to Hogwarts was a little difficult until he spoke in a language Dobby understood. Harry asked Dobby, "What happens if House Elves try not to clean, or try to disobey their master's orders? It is painful, right? You can't stand it. That's because it is your nature, your very being. My nature, my very being is to forge ahead, to confront my enemies. If you try to stop me, it will be as painful to me as if I stopped you from cleaning."

Dobby finally agreed to remain on standby in case of Harry's call, and to wait for Harry to engineer a method to free him from servitude to the Malfoys.

When Harry joined Hermione and the Weasley's in Diagon Alley for shopping, he was suspicious of Lucius Malfoy when he got in a fight with Arthur Weasley. That wasn't the normal behavior of Riddle's chief financier and lieutenant. So Harry inspected Ginny's cauldron of books before they returned home, and found the book horcrux. He pocketed it before Ginny ever saw the diary.

On the train back to Hogwarts Harry was hardly willing to put up with Ron's lazy jealous routine when he found out there were no compulsions on Ron to cause him to act that way. So Harry was more than willing to let his kid sister, Ginny, and her friend Luna to hang with them on the train. It took some time and some embarrassing statements from Luna before Ginny finally relaxed and stopped treating Harry like some celebrity. But when she finally did, Harry enjoyed the time spent with Hermione, Luna, and Ginny, while Ron sulked in a corner before stomping off to find someone else to play chess with.

It was the beginning of the break of friendship with Ron. Ron just couldn't accept that Harry was changed and not willing to laze his time away with Ron. Or that Harry would call Ron out on his more bigoted attitudes. But the final friendship break was when Harry's name came out of the Goblet of Fire. Ron's jealousy couldn't handle it, and his stubbornness kept him from actually apologizing and being welcomed back into the fold.

Life settled into a routine of study and hanging with his friends and practicing magic. Harry took extra effort to teach Ginny and Luna how to protect themselves from spells, how to protect their belongings, and keep from being influenced by compulsion spells. He hadn't told them or Hermione everything that had happened to him yet, he was waiting until their occlumency was up to snuff. Ron refused the extra lessons, and so he was relegated to more of a friendly acquaintance.

One day towards the end of November Lucius Malfoy showed up at the school. He was doing an "inspection" as he was a member of the board of governors and was concerned about the (unfounded) rumors he'd heard. Harry noticed he paid special attention to Ginny as he walked by to speak to Dumbledore at the head table in the great hall.

Harry saw his opportunity when Dumbledore allowed Lucius to leave his office unaccompanied to leave by the front gates. When Malfoy started wandering on his own, Harry took the chance and ambushed him. He put him under the Imperius, and forced him to turn over his house elves to Harry, and then forget the event. Harry Obliviated him for good measure, and had Dobby pour fire whiskey down his throat then dump him outside his manor later that night.

In February Ron started whining about how his pet rat, Scabbers was feeling under the weather. Harry was all set to ignore Ron's bitching, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed the rat acting…unusual. It, strangely, seemed to be paying attention to Harry more than usual. This bore investigating.

Later that night when everyone was asleep, Harry sneakily stunned the rat. He moved to the common room, and started casting diagnostics on it. It was an animagus. Harry relocated to the Room of Requirement that Riddle thought was just a place to hide things, but Dobby explained the full functions of the room.

Spelling the rat back into a man and putting him under the Imperius, Harry soon learned that it was indeed Pettigrew; who Riddle knew was the real betrayer of the Potters. Harry soon learned that the 13 muggle deaths caused by Pettigrew and the betrayal of the Potters were placed on the head of Sirius Black, his godfather, who was even now in Azkaban.

The Blacks were another family that once held great sway in wizarding society, but were brought low by the two bastard wizards. If he could get his godfather released, he could take up the Black mantle. This also brought up Riddle's memories that Lucius Malfoy was angling to take over all the assets and political power the Black family had through his forced marriage to Narcissa and his son Draco. Harry also discovered all the loyalty and slave spells that were employed to force Bellatrix into the mad killer she was perceived to be. And she was hiding a horcrux for Riddle.

Harry decided on a series of actions that would free the Black family. They would make good allies, maybe even family.

First, Harry forced a draught of the living death potion down Pettigrew's gullet. That will keep him on ice for a while.

Next he arranges with Dobby for Lucius to suffer a heart attack late at night while Narcissa is deeply asleep. Can't have Lucius around to bribe the minister or pay to have Sirius assassinated while he's trying to get his godfather free. This will also give Narcissa time to get used to not having the compulsions she was living under in effect.

A couple weeks later, after Lucius is safely buried, Harry contacts Madame Bones, the head of the DMLE. She comes to Hogwarts, and Harry turns over Pettigrew, explaining how he thought the rat pet of Ron Weasley was acting strange, and so he caught him. After berating him for taking the risk as a 12 year old, she quickly gets to work overturning an injustice done.

Not two weeks later, Sirius and Pettigrew have their day in court. Without Malfoy around to ruin plans, Sirius is quickly freed and sent to recover in St. Mungos. Pettigrew is sent to occupy Sirius' old cell. Madame Bones arranges, at Harry's request, a visit for Harry to St. Mungos to meet his godfather.

When Harry arrives, he sees Sirius yelling at Kreacher, ordering him to start cleaning up Grimmauld place. Harry recognizes him as the House Elf of Regulus that Riddle thought died to place one of his Horcruxes in a particular cave.

Harry spends a pleasant time chatting with Sirius. As he was leaving, he asks Sirius if he could call on Kreacher for some errands. Sirius agrees and orders Kreacher to follow Harry's orders as if they were his own.

Later that night Harry calls Kreacher and gets the whole story from him, about how Regulus' last order before dying was for Kreacher to find a way to destroy the horcrux, and Kreacher was unable to. Harry convinces Kreacher to let him help, and requests the Room of Requirement to provide a furnace he can use fiendfyre in. That night by completing Regulus' final command, Harry won Kreacher's support. Kreacher became a much better elf to Sirius, after Harry convinced Sirius to treat Kreacher decently.

The rest of the school year passed uneventfully, full of friends, training, and school things. Dumbledore orders Harry to return to the Dursleys, as that is "the safest place for you, young Harry." In order to continue to fool the old manipulator, Harry agrees. And to play his part, he does sleep at the Dursleys, while spending his days either with Sirius and Remus or training and playing with his girls when they get a chance to get away. Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Harry often meet either at his Potter Place, Grimmauld, or Luna's place, since they are the most adult supervision free places available for them to learn and practice, or just play.

That summer Harry retrieves the ring horcrux. He feels a connection between his invisibility cloak and the ring. So harry dispels the rotting curse, and uses the killing curse on the ring, instead of fiendfyre. When the ring and resurrection stone are completely clean, Harry puts it on. With the ring and his cloak on, they feel more powerful than alone.

Harry comes to the realization they are likely the Hallows. Now all he needs is the wand to complete the set. He decides he'll do some research after destroying Riddle and Dumbledore to see if he can find it later. It would be interesting to see the effects of having all three pieces, if owning only two feel powerful like they do.

The last big action he takes during that summer is sneaking into Azkaban and replacing Bellatrix with a polyjuiced murderer/rapist who mysteriously dies of a heart attack. He then ghosts Bellatrix out of Azkaban. Harry also kills the LeStrange brothers, and frees Bellatrix from all the slave and compulsion spells. Narcissa and Andromeda, a trained healer, is brought in to reunite with and help their sister Bellatrix heal from her years of enforced slavery.

Sirius and Harry work together to get the LeStrange estate assigned to the Blacks, as the last to "die" was Bellatrix, and so as the wife of the last of the LeStranges, the estate reverts to her family. Harry and Sirius find and destroy the cup horcrux. Sirius uses what remains of the LeStrange estate to set up a dowry for their newly discovered cousin, "Ella" Black. It's only right that Bella gets something from her years of slavery.

Harry and Hermione in third year took ancient runes, arithmancy, and care of creatures. Without loyalty potions in Hermione's system she felt no need to go overboard to prove to the teachers just how capable she was by taking all the electives possible. She recognized how divination was really only a diversion for those without the gift, and felt no need to go torture herself with the mangled pureblood propaganda about muggles.

The year was going well, until Pettigrew escaped from Azkaban. Some careless auror hadn't reset the anti-animagus spells on the cell block. Sirius suspected it was a death eater that never got put in prison, but there was no proof beyond negligence.

The minister, Fudge, had the bright idea that since Pettigrew hid in Hogwarts for so many years, he'd likely go back. So Fudge stationed dementors around Hogwarts. That lasted until the first quidditch match where Harry and several other students almost lost their souls from the dementors or their lives from falling off their brooms. Fudge quickly removed the dementors back to Azkaban after the public made a stink, and assigned a guard of Aurors to patrol Hogwarts.

Because of the "danger" of the escaped convict, Dumbledore decided to lock down on Harry, not allowing him to go to Hogsmeade. Fred and George came through for him, as a friend of their sister and a somewhat friend of their brother, and their star seeker, they lent him the marauder's map so he could sneak out and relax his nerves. Harry in turn introduced the twins to Padfoot and Moony of the marauders. Sirius and the twins made a contract that he would fund their joke shop based on how they did on their Newts, to give them motivation to do well and to get their mother off their backs. (Little did they know that Sirius' plan would backfire, once Molly saw their Newts compared to their grades, she wouldn't leave them alone for weeks over their poor showing when they had so much potential and how they can now get jobs in the ministry. Suckers.)

The rest of the year passes with no further problems. Despite having to be wary of Dumbledore and Snape, Harry has never had life so good. He's got three very cute girls that are his good friends. He's knows a lot of magic, has an extended family in Sirius, Remus, and the Black sisters. He's working towards his goals and he feels alive.

That summer Sirius brings along Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Fred, and George to the minister's box for the World Quidditch Cup. Ron would be invited too, but since he'd hadn't been doing his school work due to his own laziness (Hermione certainly wasn't going to do it for him), his grades were on the edge of failing, so he had summer make up work that his mother was forcing him to do.

During the after party, when some Death Eaters decided they were going on a revel, Harry took the opportunity to snipe a couple of them before the rest portkeyed out of there. The dark mark sign was cast in the woods behind them, and they found that Draco's wand had been used to cast the mark, even though Draco wasn't present. Winky, Barty Crouch's elf was there and got blamed, being released from service.

The last week of summer, Harry found Hermione, Luna, and Ginny's occlumency to be good enough to keep Snape and Dumbledore out from everything but a full out mind assault. So he confided in them what had changed in him at the end of his first year. Along with the story, he told Ginny how close she'd gotten to one of the horcrux, courtesy of Lucius Malfoy, and just what was in the Chamber of Secrets.

After they all took some time to adjust to the big revelations, Ginny was the first to pledge to help Harry destroy Riddle and Dumbledore. Hermione and Luna quickly followed. When asked why she was so quick, she told them just why the Weasley family was poor, the Malfoys back in the day had cheated them, and Dumbledore had promised their family help in rising up, but he was clearly just using her family, and she found that unacceptable.

They then carefully worded a magical oath they would take to make sure that none of them would betray the others, just for peace of mind and to ensure they were always together.

The school year started with the announcement of no Quidditch and a Tri-Wizard Tournament. Harry felt a little suspicious of the tournament, but when he heard that only those 17 or older would be allowed to compete, he relaxed.

In the first DADA class, Harry twigged onto the fact that the teacher was not Moody, based on Riddle's memories of Moody. When he checked the map, he saw it was an imposter. Later that night he and his girls snuck in and captured Barty Crouch jr. and questioned him. They found out the plot of entering him into the tournament so he could be delivered to Voldemort for the ritual.

They debated about what to do with Barty and Moody, and Riddle's plan. Eventually they decided to see if Moody could be trusted to keep up the ruse until Harry had a chance to kill Riddle. It turned out that Moody was under loyalty oaths to Dumbledore that would force Moody to report to him. With that information they were forced to Obliviate Moody and leave him captive.

For all the Death Eaters that Moody had fought against as an auror, even if he was beholden to Dumbledore, they made sure that Moody was kept a comfortable and well fed prisoner and enspelled to not try to escape before the final task. Barty was enspelled to ignore the decent treatment of Moody and not torture him, but continue normally otherwise.

When Harry found that Winky still hadn't found an acceptable family a month into the school year, Harry offered either his family, or Hermione, Ginny, or Luna's families for consideration. She chose Luna's because there would be plenty of work to do, Luna's house was magical, Harry already had other elves, and she wanted another mistress to give her baby wizards to take care of.

When Harry's name came out of the Goblet, the school turned against him, or at least that's how it felt at first. With Harry's increased observation skills, he noticed that most of the students were taking a wait and see hands off approach. It was mostly Hufflepuff, who was upset the Boy-Who-Lived was trying to show up their champion, and Malfoy that were the outspoken jerks stirring the pot.

Hagrid invited Harry out one night to discover that the first task was dragons, which Harry already knew because Ginny, Fred, and George had all told him their brother Charlie was on site for work. Harry saw that everyone but Cedric knew about the dragons, so he tried to play it fair by informing him. Unfortunately Cedric wasn't as mature as he could be and when Harry requested a word, he didn't accept the invitation or stop his Hufflepuff followers from badmouthing and harassing Harry. So Harry decided if that's the way he wanted to play it, he could go jump.

The first task was pretty easy for Harry. He transfigured a stag, grim, and wolf out of rocks to distract the dragon while he levitated a rock he transfigured into a cloth to stick to the egg, then summoned the cloth. In and out in five minutes. Thanks to the biases of the Beauxbaton and Durmstrang judges, Harry ended up in third place. Cedric ended up last place. Bet he wished he had been better informed as to the task now, didn't he?

When the Yule Ball was announced, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna took the choice of who to ask to the ball out of his hands by informing him he would be taking all three of them. Who was he to argue? He made sure each of his dates had a lovely dress.

At the ball, McGonagall was naturally huffy that he dared be all scandalous to Hogwarts reputation. Harry ignored her. An interesting note was that Fleur Delacour, who had been somewhat snooty previously, seemed to be impressed that he had three dates. Especially because her date was about as conscious as a slug, unable to resist her allure. After Fleur talked to his dates, they allowed her two dances with Harry. Harry was amused by the whole affair, and compliant with the wishes of his dates. Each of them got equal snog time that night. And when he was occupied with one girl's lips, the other two entertained each other. Clearly it was good to be Harry Potter.

After the Yule Ball, Fleur began joining them for their training and study sessions. She would often bring young Gabi along to learn with the group, who thought the little girl adorable.

Harry's hostage ended up being Hermione, while Fleur's was Gabi. Harry and Fleur were not amused, and they worked together to save their hostages. It was a good thing, because of Fleur's nature as a Veela, she struggled to cast properly in the water. The Merfolk seemed to also have great enmity to the Veela, and it required a few well cast shows of Harry's disapproval before they finally got the point and stopped impeding his and Fleur's progress.

Harry ended up in third place overall because of the judges biases. Harry was frustrated with their stupidity. It would make it more difficult to get to the portkey first, and most likely make Barty Crouch jr. do something to the other contestants to ensure his placement. Harry and his girls decided they would at least warn Fleur of the dangers.

When he and his girls pulled Fleur aside to warn her of how dangerous the third task was, and that she needed to stay away from the cup, she demanded to be let in on the secret. After a short discussion, and use of the anti-betrayal oaths, Harry explained who Barty Crouch jr. was and what the plot was to get him to the portkey, as well as what they planned to do to counter it.

Fleur decided to go all in and join their group. She has a strong sense of justice from her years of being discriminated against for being Veela, and she wants to be part of a group that can treat her as a competent witch, not just a sex object.

With Fleur's promise of backup when he takes the portkey, the other girls feel better about letting Harry continue the plan. So they spend the rest of the year training and planning. They decided that they will have Hermione, Ginny, and Luna capture Barty Crouch jr. after the third task starts so he won't interfere with the task, or have his absence be a warning to Riddle.

Everything goes according to plan. Barty is captured quickly while out of sight of everyone else there for the tournament. Harry and Fleur quickly take down Cedric and Krum so they won't interfere. Harry and Fleur hold hands and grab the portkey at the same time.

Once they land, they take cover, prepared for spell fire. Seeing nobody in the immediate vicinity, they look around. A short distance away they can see Pettigrew puttering around a large cauldron. Harry and Fleur creep closer.

Once they are in range, they quickly hail stunners down on Pettigrew and the baby form of Riddle. The two were stunned unconscious with no chance to retaliate.

Harry hears muttering coming from behind, he turns and sees Riddle's snake, Nagini. He acts quickly and with an overpowered cutting curse beheads it. Its manner of death confirms that it was a horcrux.

Harry steps up to the babymort, and casts a spell to determine if it has anymore horcrux links remaining. The spell comes up negative. He beheads Riddle's construct. No final words, no taunting the villain that all his plans are undone. Harry just wants to end it quickly.

Harry transfigures Pettigrew into a small rat plushy. He'll gift him to Sirius and Remus so they can get closure with their betrayer instead of the chance that he would escape prison again. He and Fleur return to the cup, and grab it together, being port-keyed back to the Hogwarts grounds where they are hailed as the co-winners of the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

While Harry and Fleur were going through the maze, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna had called over Madame Bones to help arrest the Moody imposter they found doing suspicious things. Under veritaserum Barty spills all his secrets, of how he escaped Azkaban all those years ago, of his master's plan to regain his body, of taking over Moody's place at Hogwarts. Harry's group had Obliviated him of the knowledge that he'd been caught once before so nobody would suspect his group of having caught onto him already. Madame Bones rescued the real Moody, and set Barty Crouch jr. to have a court date for further charges next week.

The night the tournament ended Harry had to field many questions by Dumbledore and his angry teacher spy, Snape, about what happened after they grabbed the cup. Harry kept to the script, that once they'd both touched the cup, it transported them to the winner's circle. Nothing unusual happened.

Dumbledore wasn't sure what to think. Was Voldemort playing some kind of game and instead of killing Harry and the French tart, he Obliviated them of the knowledge of the ritual and sent them back? That is not like him. Did the portkey fail? Did they immediately vacate the graveyard before they had a chance to be captured? Dumbledore's uncertainty stayed his hand from trying anything more overt to get answers. He would continue to act like he had been for years, like the chess master he fancied himself to be.

When Harry left Dumbledore's office, he kept an eye on the mauraders map, and saw that when Snape left the office, he made his way to his own quarters. Harry made a snap decision, and intercepted Snape while wearing his cloak. Casting the Imperius on Snape, Harry followed along as Snape made his way out of the castle. When they'd left the wards, Harry had Snape go to the shrieking shack, and interrogated him.

Harry learned the depths of Snape's perfidy. Snape was ultimately loyal only to himself, and wished for all his enemy's deaths. He discovered the extent of Snape's sick obsession over his mother, Lily. Harry discovered that sometimes Snape would kidnap girls that remind him of Lily in order to rape them while enspelling them to act like Lily, then kill them and hide their bodies. Snape made deals with both Voldemort and Dumbledore that would lead to both James and Harry's deaths and Lily's enslavement. Dumbledore had asked Snape to investigate the site of the ritual, which told Harry that Dumbledore had also caught Barty and learned everything, but let the plan go forward, leaving his ally Moody in duress.

Harry made the decision that Snape wasn't leaving the Shrieking Shack alive. Harry used the killing curse, ending the disease that was Snape. He then apparated to Riddle Manor, and left Snape's body in the main room to mislead Dumbledore. If Dumbledore investigated the scene, it would appear that Snape had followed a summons to Voldemort, and was then killed by him.

As Harry was getting ready to leave and head back to Hogwarts, he suddenly stopped and started thinking about what he was doing. He was setting some elaborate trap that Dumbledore may or may not fall into. Dumbledore may or may not come to the conclusions Harry wanted him to come to. This impulsive plan is way too wobbly.

Harry realized that he was letting his hatred of Dumbledore lead him into acting like the crazy soul broken Voldemort had acted. Coming up with grandiose, dramatic plans, and then just killing lots of people after they failed.

After some introspection Harry determined that he was justified in killing Snape. He was also justified in killing Dumbledore. Both those men were his enemies, and they were monsters. They both wanted him dead, or enslaved then dead. He didn't actually have to wait for them to cast curses on him to act in defense of his self and loved ones. He didn't have to leave them alive to continue plotting to harm his people or other people.

With that firm decision, Harry made some preparations and stopped off at a couple of muggle stores to get certain items. He'd decided if he was going to end Dumbledore, he would need to come prepared for overkill.

He arrived back at Hogwarts less than an hour later. He approached Dumbledore's office with his wand in one hand with a Lumos lit to keep Dumbledore's attention on the obvious threat. In his other hand that he held behind his leg was a 9mm Glock. When Dumbledore answered the door, Harry had made himself looked frantic.

"Headmaster, I just had a dream. Voldemort was really, really angry. He was torturing Professor Snape, sir! You don't think it could be real, do you? I mean, why would he have Snape?"

The moment Dumbledore started turning away, Harry stepped forward, putting the Glock to the back of Dumbledore's head, and fired, splattering Dumbledore's brains on the wall. Harry immediately cast a glamour on himself to hide his appearance in shadows.

He stepped into the Headmaster's office and took control of the wards. As the new Headmaster, he ordered all the portraits to forget what they'd seen, and to forget the next couple of hours. He then picked up Dumbledore's wand, immediately feeling the connection between the stone, the wand, and his cloak. So, Dumbledore had the wand? No wonder he had a reputation for brilliant casting if he held the deathstick.

Harry cast the spell to see if Dumbledore had any horcrux soul links, the answer came back positive, as his wizarding portrait. So, the old man was as dark as his supposed Nemesis. Harry cast the killing curse on the horcrux, then transfigured the old man's body into a bone and cleaned up the blood.

Harry then called Dobby and first had him place the bone in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, where no one would find it before Acromantulas would.

Then Harry and Dobby spent the next hour packing everything of Dumbledore's up, finding several hidden cubbyholes. They had journals and legal papers.

Before leaving the room, Harry checked what additions Dumbledore or other headmasters had made to the wards over the years, and was disgusted. There were additions of everything from spying on students in the showers, to being able to prostitute said students. Anti-fighting spells in halls were in abeyance so bullying could occur. Dark and dangerous items and people were allowed to waltz right in.

Harry spent the next hour repealing all those abuses of power, making Hogwarts once again as safe as advertised. To top it off, Harry locked up how much power the headmasters had to change the wards so the evil bastards couldn't ever again gain a foothold in the school. Bins was dismissed as the history teacher, and passed on into the next life.

As Harry left, he released the wards so that in the morning McGonagall would find Dumbledore absent and no longer the headmaster. There was quite a bit of commotion the next morning when it was discovered that both Snape and Dumbledore were missing, but there was no evidence of what happened thanks to a certain house elf.

Harry came clean with his group of girls as to what he'd been up to the previous night, and was loudly chastised for not going with backup. The girls couldn't really blame him for his actions when he revealed what he'd learned about Snape and Dumbledore, but they were furious that he acted without them. He promised he wouldn't do anything so reckless without backup again.

The rest of the summer the group and the Black family, including Remus, spent a large portion of their time going through Dumbledore's journals and legal papers. Fleur joined them for the summer and was planning on transferring to Hogwarts for her seventh year there instead of at Beauxbatons. She wanted to spend more time with Harry and his girls.

They discovered that Dumbledore had originally been planning on ruling the world with Grindelwald, but they had a difference of opinion on how it was to be done. Grindelwald yearned for glorious battle and dominion over muggles and magical alike. Dumbledore demanded that they become the hidden power, shaping the minds of magical children for years until they were to be worshipped as the next Merlin. Their disagreement led to their estrangement through the death of Dumbledore's sister.

Over the next couple of decades Dumbledore found that he wasn't able to have as much influence as he had assumed he would through just being a transfiguration teacher. And he needed gold to be able to influence society, which he didn't have. So he started to target vulnerable children, stealing their inheritances and leaving them broke, or influencing those he couldn't target to trust him and donate to different funds that Dumbledore assured them was worthy. Which is where the majority of the Potter fortune ended up thanks to Dumbledore's manipulations of James Potter. It also turned out that Dumbledore was behind the loss of the Weasley fortune, not the Malfoys. That revelation pissed Ginny off something fierce.

Dumbledore's epic duel with Grindelwald that was in reality shooting his lover in the back while they slept, cemented him as the next Merlin to British magical society, which Dumbledore leveraged into being the Chief Warlock, the Supreme Mugwump, and the headmaster of Hogwarts. He was able to widen his preying on the vulnerable members of society beyond the halls of Hogwarts, literally stealing fortunes.

Everyone in the group was flabbergasted at the sheer gall of the man, not to mention his widespread success. Everyone, especially Harry himself, were glad that he had ended the man instead of dancing around trying to entrap him. With the political power and wealth Dumbledore commanded that would have been a losing prospect.

To try to put society back together and return some of the ill gotten gains, Sirius and Remus worked on hunting down the remaining member of the families that Dumbledore had wronged in order to anonymously return the properties, businesses, heirlooms, and gold. They were able to find many destitute and angry individuals that were amazed to find their family's property being returned to them, along with a written letter explaining who had robbed them and how and why it was now being returned.

Harry got all his Potter Family properties and fortunes returned. Because many of the families lines ended, there was a great deal of left over wealth after everything was returned that could be. They split the remainder between Harry's girls, Remus, and the Black Family. Everyone in Harry's group was now rich, and would have nothing to worry about financially.

While Remus and Sirius worked on returning each family's fortunes, the girl's were busy writing a tell-all book to expose Dumbledore for the villain he was. The week before the book hit the bookshelves all the evidence was delivered to Madame Bones' desk so that she could verify the truth and prepare her aurors for the chaos that was bound to happen when the new broke.

The next year was quiet for the group. Harry and Hermione took their Owls while Fleur took her Newts. Ginny and Luna were working to catch up so they could graduate at the same time as Harry and Hermione.

The next two years Fleur worked as the assistant DADA instructor so that she could spend her days in Hogwarts with her new group of friends and lovers. The group had duplicated the library Dumbledore had amassed through theft before they returned the property to the proper owners, so they were able to study a huge assortment of advanced magic that even Riddle's memories in Harry's head didn't have. He quite liked learning something Riddle never had access to. It felt good to not be relying on the memories of that psychopath, but making his own.

One of the things of note that they found among Dumbledore's things was the historical account of how some of the wizards in the past were experimenting with demons, and they created something they called The Slayer. The complicated spell and alchemical work they created would empower a young girl between the ages of 12-16 with demonic speed, strength, and regeneration.

The wizards thought it was interesting, but could never get the same spell to work on wizards, so they gave up the project. They did note that a small group of muggles seemed unusually interested in it, and they created what they called the Watchers Council to manipulate and control this weapon that would jump to another girl once the current one died.

Harry and his girls didn't like the sound of that; it was too close to how Dumbledore treated Harry and every other one of his victims. So after they all graduated the group hunted down this so called Watchers Council to determine where the Slayer was. They decided they would go give her support. If she was amenable to joining their group, they would support her against the demons and the council. It was only a matter of time before she was on their side and willing to get rid of the manipulative council.

Harry and his group arrived in Sunnydale just in time for Halloween, which is when Harry's consciousness was pulled out of his body and put into Clark's body.

Harry was confused where he was, and saw a note telling him to play a recording. So he watched Clark's proposed deal. He thought about it for a time, and decided it wasn't a bad idea. All that Kryptonian tech could be very useful, especially if combined with magic. So Harry spent the next year under time compression alternating between memorizing the Kryptonian language, sciences, and schematics for computers and A.I.s and recording the basic seven year Hogwarts education, plus a bit extra, like occlumency.

Time was finally up for Harry. He was able to get quite the haul using his occlumency that he could recreate when he gets back home to his own body.

* * *

Clark wakes up from experiencing the 18 years of Harry Potter's life. 'That was very different from canon.' He reaches down, and confirms he is once again male. "Yes!"

He started jumping around, excited.

Several minutes later Clark is standing in front of a mirror, staring at himself. He looks like Harry Potter, not Clark Kent.

"Well, at least I'm a man again." Clark comments to himself out loud. "There was nothing wrong with having boobs, of course." Clark abruptly stopped talking as boobs sprout out of his chest.

"Nothing wrong with looking like Bulma." Clark tests. Sure enough, he shrinks and morphs to look like Bulma, all woman.

"Nothing wrong with looking like Clark Kent." Clark states, with an image of himself as Clark in mind. He grows and turns back into a male, looking like he should as Clark.

Clark grins hugely. "I'm a metamorphmagus now. Cool."

He raises his right hand, and while mentally focusing, softly voices, "Lumos." Light shines from his index finger. "Nox." It goes out.

"Yer a wizard, Clark!" He shouts to himself, laughing.

Clark stops jumping around and runs outside into the sun, where he feels the solar energy start to fill up his reserves. It worked! He's still Kryptonian, he's a wizard, and he's a man. At least when he wants to be, which is all the time except for experimentation in bed.

Clark sits down to ponder what to do next. The past ten years, even when he was having fun and traveling were stressful, not knowing if he could get himself back to normal, or if he'd have to show up on the Kents doorstep as a woman and confess what a reckless thing he'd done without even warning them.

Looking off in the direction of Smallville, Clark smiled. "Well, it's been a while since I've been home, that'll be first on the itinerary." Clark then shifted his thoughts to Buffy and her group. "I kind of share Harry's desire to help her group out. Fighting enemies from without is bad enough when you know you can trust your allies. But if you can't trust them to have your back? Hmm. Got to fix that."

Clark then shifted his thoughts to England. "I wonder if there is a Hogwarts in this world? And if there is a young man named Harry Potter that is anything like the one I've got memories of?" Humming thoughtfully, Clark decided. "First a trip back home for a while. I can rebuild my time machine when I'm home, now that I've got secure locations to keep it in. Then a trip to England to see what's what. Maybe I can steal some time turners while I'm at it? That would be a lot handier to use on a regular basis than my time machine to be able to live in three different locations at once." Clark mused to himself.

"It's a plan then." Clark firmly decided before setting up his mirror and time dilation device to get a quick solar charge so he could get home quick. It had been a while since he'd seen Ma, Pa, Kara, Sophia, and Nathan. He missed his family.


	3. Chapter 3

Clark flew down and landed in front of the Kent household early in the morning of November 3rd. Looking around, he saw his dad doing his morning chores. His dad had a bale of hay in each hand, carrying them as if they weighed nothing, to feed their small herd of cows. The treatment for his mom and dad made them very sturdy and strong. Almost no regular weapons here on earth would be able to damage them. They would never be as strong as an actual Kryptonian like Clark and Kara, but they would be about equivalent to Spiderman.

Despite knowing their son had a large company and having no bills to pay, Clark's dad just couldn't give up the work ethos he'd lived his life by. It just didn't fit his world view. So Clark didn't try to press him to change the way he lived his life. Jonathan seemed more at ease now that the bills were gone, but he just loved working his farm.

Clark silently joined Jonathan in doing the daily chores needed to keep the farm running. Jonathan seemed to radiate a sense of contentment at having his son join him in manly endeavors. Clark also enjoyed the bonding time spent with his dad.

After a while, Jonathan broke the silence. "So, enjoy your mysterious Halloween trip out of town?"

Looking over, Clark saw a small smile lurking on Jonathan's lips. Chuckling, Clark replied. "Yeah, it was profitable. Picked up some new tech and knowledge. Did you know, it's not just aliens and science out there? Magic is real too."

"No kidding?" Jonathan looked a little skeptical. In reply Clark silently conjured three fireballs to start juggling with. Once he saw that, Jonathan got a more thoughtful look. "Huh. No kidding then."

"Yup. This is just the tip of the iceberg, really." Clark then conjured a simple chair. "This chair is solid, but not permanent." Clark said as Jonathan was poking said chair. "Depending on how much juice is put in the conjuration it could last only a couple hours or it could actually be permanent if enough energy is used."

"Well, that would come in handy at family gatherings to make sure everyone has a seat." Jonathan casually stated as he started walking back to the house as the morning chores were finished.

Clark followed along, chuckling at his dad's casual acceptance of magic. He guessed after aliens, magic was somewhat tame. "Yup. The only thing you can't conjure up out of nothing is food."

"It wouldn't do to have your food disappear from your stomach." Jonathan agreed. Smelling the air, Jonathan stated, "Well, smells like breakfast is just about ready. Let's get cleaned up and get some grub."

Clark cheerfully agreed. It'd been over ten years since he'd had his mom's cooking. When he entered the kitchen, he was greeted to shouts of "Clark's back!" and hugs from his six year old sister, Sophia, his mom, and Kara. He'd only been gone for a couple days for them, but their cheer at seeing him back really warmed his heart.

He spent the next hour enjoying the morning routine of his family as he got ready for a day at school with his friends. He'd missed them while he was away.

On the way to School in their pickup, Kara turned to Clark and stared at him with a peculiar look.

"What?" Clark asked.

"You're different." Kara stated matter of factly.

"What?" Clark repeated as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye while driving.

Nodding affirmatively, Kara continued staring at Clark. "You might as well tell me. I'm going to be staring a hole in you all day until you come clean. You won't have a moments rest from my laser eyes of perception." She declared.

"You heard what I told dad earlier about magic?" Clark stalled, wondering if he should come clean or come up with a story.

"Yes, but it's more than that. You look different and you seem older now. Now spill! What happened?"

Clark reflected on the fact that in superhero stories so much drama could be avoided if the hero would just trust his family with his secrets. It's not like Spiderman's family or love interests would be in any less danger from his enemies if he kept them in the dark. In fact, being ignorant of that side of his life would actually make it much more dangerous for them. They wouldn't know who to be wary of.

And while it's true that Clark has no interest in joining the spandex brigade, he does plan on looking into those secret societies, helping the Scooby gang in Sunnydale, and checking into the magic users of Britain. Just the secret societies alone will probably have people who would want to murder him and his family for daring to poke into their business.

So Clark adjusted his mindset about sharing his extra curricular activities with those closest to him. Besides, he didn't think Kara would forgive him if he got into any more fun stuff and didn't invite her. So, he decided to spill the beans.

"I found a town where vampires, demons, and magic people congregate. This dude was casting a spell to turn people into their costumes. I decided to take advantage of the spell to turn into a brilliant inventor who could give me plans for a time machine among other knowledge and tech. Problem was, I was particularly vulnerable to magic. And the inventor was a girl. I was supposed to go back to normal after the spell ended-"

Clark was interrupted by loud laughter. "You turned into a girl!" Kara gasped for air, clutching her sides she was laughing so hard. "_You_ turned into a _Girl_! Ahahah!"

Clark couldn't really blame her for laughing at him so much. He would have laughed at anyone else too if it didn't happen to him. Squirming a bit at being laughed at so much, Clark manfully bore it. Now that he was a man full time again.

"That's what you focus on? Not the vampires, demons, magic, or time travel, but that I turned into a girl?"

Kara airily waves her hand to dismiss everything he brought up. "Meh. Not nearly as hilarious as you turning into a girl!" And she starts to laugh again.

Clark resigned himself to waiting out her laughing fit. Several minutes later, she finally finishes cracking jokes at his expense.

"So how'd you get back to being normal again? Wait, don't tell me. Time travel. You wanted go _Back to the Future! _and do the costumes more than once. That's why you picked the time travel inventor first, right?"

"Yup. The problem was that my solar reserves were somehow channeled into the spell to make it permanent. I was a girl, and I had no super strength. I may have panicked a bit." Kara got a look of understanding on her face. "So I figured if I wanted to use the spell to get back to being me, I had to build up my reserves first. I went back in time, had a run in with a vampire that I barely survived, freaked out at the thought of a vampire or demon with a time machine. Destroyed said time machine, and waited out the rest of the years."

Looking thoughtful, Kara asked, "How long?"

Looking over at her, Clark replied, "Ten years. I missed you and the rest of the family. The gang too. It just wasn't the same."

Kara leaned over and gave him a tight hug. "I'm glad you made it back." Then she leaned back and slugged him several times, hard, in the shoulder. "And that's for not taking me to a magical Halloween, you jerk! Don't ever do that again!"

"Ow! Okay, okay! I was wrong! I'm sorry, I won't ever do it again!" Clark swore.

"Good! You better not!" Kara declared before flipping a switch and going back to hug mode, putting Clark's arm over her shoulder as she hugged him. "So how'd you go back to being you? Dress up as yourself for the second Halloween?"

"Not exactly. I figured something about me was particularly vulnerable to magic, and after I lost my solar battery, I think the Hellmouth made me particularly jumpy, all that hell energy in the air. I think that's one reason I panicked so much. So I dressed up as a wizard, hoping to get back to being male and hopefully getting some resistance to magic. I think everything mixed together to turn me into what's known by the wizards as a metamorphmagus. I shape change." And Clark turned his face into Harry Potter's face.

"No way! That is so cool!" Kara exclaimed, bouncing in her seat.

Clark turned back to his regular face as they pulled into the school parking lot. "Yeah, we could have some fun with it." Clark admitted with a grin.

Clark turned serious a moment later after he found a parking spot. "Kara, what do you think about telling our friends about us and where we come from? They already know we have 'abilities' and they've kept their mouths shut about it so far. Even Chloe who we've known the shortest and has the reporters bug hasn't spilled a word."

Kara looked unsure about what to say. "I don't know Clark. I really like them, but I don't know if they are ready for such a big secret."

Clark nodded in understanding. "You don't have to decide now. Take a week, or month, or however long to think about it. Heck, if you want to test them to see if they can keep quiet in the face of temptation we can even have Jorv bring in an HFR with a lucrative money deal on behalf of a "corporate sponsor" to see if they would spill what they already know. If they break, then they definitely can't be trusted with more."

Kara looked thoughtful at that suggestion. "You know that if they take the deal we won't be able to view them the same way after that, right? We'll probably distance ourselves from them and it'll never be the same. It would ruin the friendship."

"Honestly, if after so many years of friendship they would sell us out for a few bucks, or a few thousand, then they aren't friends we should keep anyway. On the other hand, if they are trustworthy, I'd like to bring them into our adoptive family, so to speak. If they're going to be around long term, we should boost their physical abilities like I did for mom and dad, just so they're tough enough to survive being around us."

Kara looked thoughtful, but was unable to make a decision right away. Clark gave her time to think it through while they started school. While in class Clark spent most of his attention on the updates Jorv was sending his way.

Jorv reported that their lawyers had finally won the appeal process and gotten Dex McCallum released. They weren't able to find enough evidence to pin the whole thing on Mayor Tate, but they had enough alibis and evidence to free Dex, especially after uncovering enough of the Mayor's shady dealings to force him to stop using his political friends' connections to delay Dex's court proceedings.

Clark wasn't sure just what he should do about the Mayor, but after thinking about it for a bit, he decided he'd wait a bit for now. Once his friends went through the loyalty test, he'd have time to lay everything out for Lana and let her decide on the Mayor's fate, since he'd wronged her family it was only fair to get her input. Meanwhile Jorv had hired Dex as a worker in one of their manufacturing plants.

Jorv reported that the E.L. Group has been having good success in the business world. They had a branch office in the capitols of 36 of the states. Each of the branch offices would determine their best strategy in their state for smoothly fitting in, filling in available niches, providing necessary goods and services, all while building up infrastructure and amassing manpower. The goal wasn't to become a monopoly, of course, but if they were among the leaders, they could help influence where society goes. Encouraging political leaders to engage in less pork barrel spending while investing in actually helpful projects could only be possible with a certain amount of influence that deep pockets bring.

After reviewing each of the E.L. Group's branches, Clark gave a few suggestions on how to overcome some of the problems they were facing. Clark mostly let Jorv and the employees they had hired deal with issues, only stepping in when the situation didn't have a readily available solution. What was the point of hiring people if they didn't learn how to take care of his business for him? Even with his fast processing speeds, there was only so far he could split his attention and efforts, and if he was always stepping in the solve problems, the people he hoped to lead his business empire would be too weak to do a good job. Even if they didn't do a perfect job, or messed up entirely, if they were able to give a report on their failures and what they would do in the future to avoid those mistakes, he felt it was good to keep them around. Otherwise he would be constantly hiring new people to make the same mistakes the old people had.

Naturally there was a limit to how generous he could afford to be. If someone couldn't learn from their mistakes, they obviously had no business working at the level they were at, and needed to spend more time at a lower level before working their way up again. With Jorv keeping an eye out, the petty office politics were kept to a minimum, and actual ability was allowed room to grow while the incompetents were shifted down or left the company of their own accord.

Clark took some time to set up the loyalty test for his friends, which was carried out that weekend. A couple of HFRs cornered each of his friends separately and offered them money for information about certain individuals, like Clark, that have abilities. All of his and Kara's friends passed the test, proving that a lot of money couldn't make them turn on him and Kara. Chloe went so far as to convince the HFR that she would "report" any such individuals to him, and promptly took the money to give to Clark to help him go on the run and hide from the Evil Corporate Drones. 'That girl epitomizes the term intrepid', Clark fondly thought of his blonde journalist friend.

After they passed the test, the next Friday Clark and Kara invited Pete, Lana, Emily, and Chloe back to the Kent place to do the big reveal. This would give them a whole weekend to adjust and ask any questions they had. Clark knew Chloe at least would burst if she had to hold her questions in for any amount of time.

As his friends arrived, Clark spent some time thinking about how lucky he was to have such good friends. Ever since kindergarten Pete had been such an active kid, always moving around and getting into things, playing games, and just having fun. He was at least half the reason Clark had been able to get into acting like a kid and enjoying it.

Lana and Emily had been his friends ever since he'd saved them from drowning in a flooding creek near their house. They both brought a variety of things into his life. Lana's sheer passion for art and literature made Clark rethink his attitude towards the subjects, if only so he didn't accidently offend her for being such a philistine. In his past life he'd never had time or money for such frivolous pursuits, and so thought them worthless. Through Lana he'd learned to have an appreciation for the arts. He still thought random blobs of color thrown on a canvas were shit, but when an artist took years learning their skills and were able to capture the human spirit on canvas, well, that was admirable.

Emily was the unofficial den mother of their group. She enjoyed cooking and baking, and Clark could see her happiness when her friends extolled the virtues of her snacks. Clark guessed that she would likely end up working with people, her diplomatic skills were already high before she'd had any training.

And finally, Chloe was a seeker of Truth. She didn't subscribe to the boring norms of society, she had her mind open to the vast possibilities and lure of the unknown, while at the same time remaining grounded. She didn't just believe everything that came her way, she needed proof. But she didn't automatically discount something just because it wasn't already proven true.

Clark sat down next to Kara, across from his friends. They were looking a little unsure of just what was going on due to the serious look on Clark's face.

"We, Kara and I, have a secret we want to let you in on. We're aliens." And he sat there with a grin on his face to enjoy the explosion he was sure was incoming.

The barrage of questions and exclamations was very satisfying for Clark. Finally Kara had enough, and elbowed him in the ribs hard.

"Fine, fine, ruin my fun why don't you." Clark mock grumbled to Kara. He turned back to his friends. "Yes, Kara and I come from a different planet. If you'll come this way, we can show you some alien tech and show you videos of how life was like on our home planet of Krypton. Which is gone now. Totally destroyed. That's why we were sent here for refuge."

Shocked looks adorned their faces. Kara slapped him on the back of the head for being so insensitive. Looking over at her face, Clark apologized. "Sorry Kara. I forget sometimes that you lived most of your life there. I was only a few weeks old when I left, while Kara was 14. She was stuck in stasis in her escape pod for 15 years, which is why she's the same age as us now."

Clark then led them down to the bunker he and Jorv had built. He showed them some videos of Krypton, explained about his and Kara's ability to absorb sunlight and grow stronger. He then explained what the test of the previous weekend had been about. Clark got slapped again by all the girls and punched in the arm by Pete. While a bit furious, they eventually understood why he'd set the test up.

Clark then explained to them about the physical protections and strengthening boost he'd given his parents, and how he wanted to give the same to them and their families so they would not be in danger of being used as hostages. They still had to keep all this secret from their families, but they could explain it as super advanced medicine that had to be kept secret under NDAs.

Part of Clark's plan to help his friends included building a branch of his company for each of them, based on their desired field, that they could own and be in charge of by the time they are 25. This would give them the resources they would need to make a name for themselves if they so desired and to immerse themselves in what they loved to do. And it would make them all a lot of money, so that's a bonus.

When Clark explained about the E.L. Group and his plans to his friends, they were a bit overwhelmed at first. Clark then explained his reasoning.

"You are my best friends. You've proven to me how good you are." Clark looks over at Chloe. "Even how devious you can be." Everyone laughs while Chloe blushes. "Don't think of this as charity, or pity money, on my part. You're definitely going to have to work to get what you want. But as your friend, I want to see you guys achieve everything you want from life. I want to see what amazing things you can do. With the backing of the E.L. Group, things that would have been insurmountable obstacles before will become springboards to allow you to soar higher." Looking around at the shining eyes, Clark finishes up with a bit of humor to break the tension. "How's that for my first speech? Should I practice a bit more grandiosity?" Clark finished with a grin.

His friends blew raspberries at him, while laughing too. Clark noticed there was an extra speculative glint in Lana and Chloe's eyes while they looked at him as they talked with each other in a corner, while Emily seemed to be focused on Pete as Pete talked about his dreams.

He vaguely remembered that there was a lot of love life drama in the show he'd seen. They were all teenagers. Was he going to have to have talks with Lana and Chloe to get their feelings out in the open? Should he just ignore it until they started giving him hints? Did he want to have to choose between the two and hurt the other?

'Drama. Ugh. I'll ignore it for now, but I'm not going to neglect it until it blows up in my face. Maybe a couple weeks? I'll have to talk with both of them at the same time to have everything out in the open for all of us. This is especially weird for me after a decade of living as a woman. Just because I had the female body doesn't mean I fully understand what goes on in women's minds.'

Contrary to what Clark thought, he actually had that talk with the two girls the following evening when Chloe and Lana showed up at his house unannounced. They promptly shocked him by not beating around the bush.

Chloe explained that ever since he helped her around town and then subsequently helped her get her mother back, she's been falling for him, and she wants more than just friendship.

Lana told Clark that ever since he'd rescued her and Emily from drowning, she's had a crush on him. All the time they've spent has only made her sure that she wants him in her life as more than a friend, and she can't wait anymore.

Then they posed the question to Clark. Who would he choose?

"I've been thinking about the both of you a lot. Lana, I love that you opened my eyes to the beauty of art and literature. It has enriched my life in many ways. The time we've spent together has always been lots of fun, even when we're just messing with Pete."

"Chloe, your friendship has meant a lot to me. Your open eyed search for truth, and your sometimes painful honesty has in turn widened my view of what is possible out of life and what I want. I love having you in my life."

"I care deeply for you both, and I don't want to cut either of you out of my life. It would be too painful. Am I going to be losing you both by not being able to choose?"

Lana and Chloe then looked at each other for a moment, and shocked Clark by smiling hugely. The girls moved in and both hugged Clark, one on his left, the other on his right.

"Huh?" Clark intelligently asked.

"You answered correctly, so this is your reward." Lana stated and then kissed him deeply. Clark, while shocked, wasn't an idiot so he returned the kiss passionately.

When they broke the kiss, Chloe stated, "Since you care for both of us equally, you get to keep us both." Then she too kissed Clark deeply.

Looking back and forth between the two, Clark simply stated, "Girls, I love your enthusiasm and your initiative." Before initiating another round of kisses.

They sat down on a couch and continued to talk. Clark decided now was as good a time as any to share his Halloween adventure/mishap. Naturally they had a good laugh at his expense. Clark wasn't even upset, he'd come to expect it. And seeing his girlfriends laughing so hard they couldn't stay upright gave him a good feeling. He was glad their new relationship didn't affect how they interacted too much; they were comfortable and secure enough already to act natural, not needing to put up a front.

When Clark got to the point of the story where he was attacked by a vampire, they were on the edge of their seat; and cheered when he staked the vampire. After explaining how he got back to being a male, and now he had magic and morphing abilities, they demanded to see the girl form he'd lived as for the past ten years.

Clark assumed they wanted to tease him some more. So he decided to tease them right back. Changing into his super sexy Bulma form, he proceeded to flirt outrageously with Chloe and Lana, giving them a toe curling kiss each, before turning back into his manly form. Smugly grinning at the red faced duo, Clark felt he'd won that round.

The next day at school Clark found out that Pete had noticed Emily's looks his way and made the right decision to ask her out. The only one in their group who wasn't in a relationship now was Kara. Clark asked Lana and Chloe to make sure that Kara didn't feel like a fifth wheel while hanging out with the group.

Clark also passed out a version of the communication device that had only audio to his crew, since their eyes weren't able to see the spectrum needed for discrete visuals. If they paired the communication device with a laptop they also received they could view lessons that Jorv sent them on learning the Kryptonian language, sciences, arts, and literatures. Unfortunately, while Emily could learn the culinary recipes, they were based on a whole planets worth of spices, plants, and animals that were just not available at this time.

By the beginning of December Jorv reported that he'd studied Clark's DNA before and after his transformation by magic spell, and had figured out what had been changed to allow him to use magic. Clark allowed Jorv to do some testing on clones to double check that there were no negative effects to gifting magic to regular humans.

It took some time under time compression, but Jorv was able to verify that he would be able to add the ability to do magic to humans. Clark's crew was excited at the prospect of learning how to do magic.

To get everything set up Clark worked under time compression with Jorv to create what they would need for lessons. He first crafted a pensieve that could project memories and soon had recordings of all the classes that Riddle and Potter had attended. Clark also spent time recreating the library of books from his mind.

After giving his friends their Christmas DNA packs, they spent the next several months having a few lessons every school evening so they could become proficient with their new magical and physical abilities. Clark was pleased that everyone was able to learn the spells without needing a wand. He didn't know if it was the higher age and ability to focus, or if there was something special about his particular gene because he got it from a Harry Potter who had gathered all three Hallows and was the Master of Death.

Whichever the case may be, there was no way to answer it for now. That would have to wait until the summer where Clark would bring the gang on over to England to check on the magical world there, to see what was happening and how close it was to the memories he'd gotten from the Halloween spell. While he was there he would surreptitiously gather DNA samples from other wizards to compare to his.

Now that his girlfriends were in the know on all his secrets, he sat down with them and explained to Lana about Jor-El visiting the earth and the accidental death of her great aunt Louise McCallum. Clark showed Lana and Chloe the memory he'd gotten from his father's memory pendant in the pensieve. He then explained what he'd done with lawyers to free Dex McCallum and where he was now working. Finally he asked her to make the decision on what to do about Mayor Tate for his hand in killing her aunt.

Lana was furious about the injustice. She turned to Clark, "That man, Tate, is evil. Even if killing my aunt was an accident, he still tried to kill your dad. And he's been just as corrupt ever since. Killing him would feel right, but I don't want to go down that road. The Chinese have a saying that's appropriate for such a disgusting man as him. He was a toad lusting after swan's flesh. In that case, I want you to turn him into a toad and have him live the rest of his life in a cage." Lana finished vindictively.

Chloe laughed while Clark smiled. "Very appropriate. Do you want to confront him before turning him into a toad?"

Chloe chimed in, "It's only right if he knows what he's being punished for, Lana. If you don't want to see the disgusting toad after that, you don't have to."

Lana nodded. "Yes, I think you're right. Clark? How are we going to catch him?"

Clark rubbed his chin in thought for a moment. "We're all pretty tough, strong, and fast now. We've got magic. So capturing him is easy. We just don't know if he's told anyone about this so that someone would be suspicious of you, Lana, if he suddenly disappears. So the only question is, do you want to catch him personally and have some HFRs provide us with alibis? Or do you want to have the HFRs catch him while we provide our own alibis?"

Lana nodded excitedly. "I want to catch him personally." Chloe seemed to agree with Lana wholeheartedly.

Clark smiled back. "Okay, we'll have Jorv hack his accounts and communications to figure out just where we'll catch him in the next few days."

"And we should totally expose all his crooked dealings to the cops and the press. That should muddy the waters enough to avoid attention on us." Chloe chimed in.

"Right you are. Jorv will prepare a packet with all that to be released to the relevant parties once you give the go ahead, Chloe." Clark thoughtfully delegated control to Chloe, which she seemed to enjoy.

They soon had all the information needed from Jorv. The Mayor had a meeting with some "friends" that he would be leaving for in three days. They decided they would catch him on the way to the airport while the HFRs were in school. A couple magic spells to ensure the car broke down and some stun guns that Jorv had manufactured would make the job simple.

Which brought to mind another thing that Clark would do different from Superman, if he was to run around in tights. Superman is really strong, so when he's catching crooks, he has to always be super aware of just how much force he's exerting. Just a little too much, and he's already killed the person. So why doesn't he just run around with stun guns and shock batons to incapacitate people? He then wouldn't worry about punching someone just right so they get knocked unconscious. That would also serve to be a bit of deception, in that his enemies would never know just what he's capable of, or what tech goodies he would have.

Clark decided that if he was ever bored enough he might go have a bit of a lark doing just that. Maybe he'll morph into an 8 year old girl and run around throwing electric nets at crooks. She could be Net Girl. Or he could build himself a high tech hover Lay-Z-Boy equipped with all the non-lethal takedowns that he could then ride into battle as Sloth Man! Complete with colas and cheetos.

Three days later Clark, Chloe, and Lana were wearing masks and hoods while waiting on a deserted stretch of road that led to the airport. They had Jorv hack the Mayor's communications so they knew when he would leave; they only had to wait for a few minutes until the Mayor's vehicle showed up.

A few simple no flame hexes made it so the engine couldn't burn fuel and the Mayor's car coasted to a stop. Lana and Chloe were a little heavy handed with the tasers, while Clark was stunning and Obliviating the driver. Who wouldn't be a bit vindictive to someone who killed your family?

Clark transfigured Tate into a small doll, pocketed it, and then the girls and Clark sped off to the remote cabin they would have for the confrontation before leaving him in the care of an HFR.

* * *

The mayor went through all the usual steps. First Step: Shock.

"Louise?! How is this possible? I thought you died!"

"I'm not my aunt, Tate. We know what you did. You hired Lachlan Luthor to kill Joe the drifter, but he accidently killed my aunt. It's your fault she's dead."

Second step: Denial.

"No, I would never hurt her! She knew I cared for her! It wasn't my fault!"

Third step: Anger.

"Do you know who I am? How dare you kidnap me! You're going to be in big trouble! The police will catch you!"

Fourth step: Bargaining.

"If you let me go now, I swear I won't say a word to anyone. Is it money you want? I can get you money!"

Fifth step: Depression.

"You're not going to let me go, are you?"

Sixth step: Testing.

"Croak." A toad jumps against the wire cage walls, seeing if there's any way out.

Seventh step: Acceptance.

The toad settles down, eating its meal of grubs.

* * *

Clark settled onto the couch. Lana was settled on his lap, and Chloe was sitting next to him hugging them both.

"So, do you feel better now?" He asked Lana.

"Yes, very. Thank you, Clark. Thank you, Chloe for doing this for and with me."

"You're not in this alone, Lana. We're here for you." Chloe replies, while Clark hums in agreement.

"Well, as thanks for being there for me, I thought I'd gift you with something special." Lana states seductively as she starts unbuttoning her shirt. "Come here Clark." She purrs. Clark, not being an idiot, doesn't stammer or hesitate. His lips are soon locked onto hers. She comes up for air several moments later. "Don't think I've forgotten you, Chloe." She turns to her, smiling suggestively.

* * *

A few weeks after the missing Mayor excitement dies down as the cops figure out that they have no leads or any way to find the Mayor, some other excitement happens in town. Some guy takes the employees of a LuthorCorp plant hostage. He claims that Lionel Luthor did something that caused his seizures. He demands that they open up level three for him so he can find something to help cure him.

Lex Luthor had arrived in town a few months ago, but since Clark was technically a high school student he had no reason to be interacting with Lex. Lex was about six years older than him, and had already finished a couple of Bachelor's degrees. The man was obviously smart and driven.

Lex bravely exchanged himself as a hostage to get his employees released. This action captures Clark's attention. For Lex to take such an action shows that he has some sense of responsibility. Such a character should be given room and incentive to flourish, not be stifled under corporate greed, or unrealistic paternal expectations. Especially when the paternal expectations come from such a shady individual as Lionel Luthor.

But if Clark moves to help too quick, or offers too much, Lex's wariness will increase. Which would be the opposite effect Clark is looking for. First things first, saving Lex from an unstable individual, and possibly helping said unstable individual heal so he is no longer so unstable.

Clark contacted Jorv and had him dispatch a group of HFRs that have been cleaning up the meteor rocks, including a couple that pose as doctors. The group of HFRs arrived and make their way inside. They announce to the unhinged man that they work for a group that have been cleaning up the radioactive meteor rocks for some time, and they might have a method to neutralize the radiation that is likely causing the seizures.

It took some time, but they finally convinced him to accept treatment. After that, everything goes smoothly. The man, Earl Jenkins, got his health back. Jorv sent some lawyers to represent Earl in court. They manage to lessen his time in jail to only a few years confined in a mental institute to monitor his health and mental welfare, due to the extenuating circumstances of ill health and the radiation messing with his mental stability. After he is released in a few years, if he's stable, Jorv will offer him work. Due to his gratitude he'll likely be a very loyal employee.

Meanwhile Jorv, in his role as the CEO of the E.L. Group reaches out to Lex Luthor. Jorv explains that the owner had seen what he'd done to protect his employees, and was impressed with him. "The owner understands that there is little to no chance of poaching you from your father's company. But, he wants you to know that if the time comes where you would like to move out on your own, he would be willing to finance you starting your own company under very favorable conditions. He feels that you would be able to make a business to be proud of and that it would be very competitive in the market, while adhering to a certain standard of conduct. So, think on it, if you would Mr. Luthor."

"Can I meet this mysterious owner?" Lex Luthor questioned.

"In time, I'm sure you will. But not at this moment. He is otherwise occupied." Jorv replied, handing Lex his card, then departing, leaving Lex to look at the card contemplatively.

* * *

One morning several weeks later Clark was helping his dad with the chores on the farm, when a man drove onto their property. Clark gave his dad the heads up so they could go back to pretending they weren't capable of tossing tractors around with one hand.

The man who introduced himself as Bob Rickman had the oily personality of a second rate salesman. The kind of man you just knew would sell you ice in the arctic with no guilt because he was out to get his and he didn't care if he screwed you over in the meantime.

Clark gave his dad and Rickman some room to talk, while he continued the chores, but he kept an ear out. Rickman was trying hard to convince his dad that he had plans to build a pesticide plant that would bring a great deal of industry to Smallville, and that the Kents would benefit from selling their land to him as the site of the plant.

Clark just smiled at the futility of the man's arguments. There was no way his dad would sign away the farm. Give up his cherished dream life for a pittance of money? Pshaw.

There was something strange that happened though. When Rickman couldn't get anywhere with convincing Jonathan, he finally gave in, and went to shake his hand. Rickman seemed frustrated at having to shake Jonathan's gloved hand, so he came up with a contrived reason for Jonathan to take his gloves off. Once Jonathan did and shook his hand, Rickman stated firmly that Jonathan wanted to sell the farm to him.

Jonathan just stared at him for a moment before laughing for a bit. "No, Mr. Rickman. I don't think I do. And you're no longer welcome on my farm. So leave."

Clark noticed that Rickman seemed stunned at his dad's refusal. The whole thing was sketchy, so he contacted Jorv. "Jorv, I want you to find out all you can about this Bob Rickman character. Something is off about him. If I didn't know better I'd say he was trying to mind whammy my dad into selling the farm. Let me know soonest possible."

"I'll have the information ready for you in an hour Kal-El." Jorv promptly replied.

And an hour later Clark learned all about Bob Rickman's life. Before the meteor shower Rickman was a piss poor salesman. After he and his sales buddy, Kyle Tippet, were stuck in their car in the middle of the meteor shower, they found they had the ability to sell anything to anyone. They had unusual powers of persuasion, even when someone was initially totally against the sale, one handshake later, and the victim had signed off on the sale and later forgot ever doing so.

But then Kyle Tippet suddenly dropped off the map, and is living the life of a sculptor in the woods. Rickman on the other hand has previously built plants that have contaminated the ground water, and has several lawsuits pending against him. Clark concluded that Rickman needed an infusion of cash to deal with his legal issues, so he was attempting to rush a sale with Clark's dad that would keep him solvent for a while.

After thinking about the situation for a bit, Clark realized that even though he was now having Jorv actively hunt down and clean up the meteor rocks, they had stayed around for over a decade already, and so it's likely there were plenty more of what Chloe dubbed the "meteor freaks" running around.

Clark mulled over the situation for a while before giving Jorv some orders to have some HFRs round up Bob Rickman and Kyle Tippet so he could have a chat with them about their powers and what they would do in the future.

Jorv was efficient as always, and by that evening had rounded up both men surreptitiously and had them waiting for Clark's arrival. Jorv had them stashed in a convenient cabin outside the city limits of Smallville for those instances where they would want to do something away from prying eyes that wouldn't be connected to them.

Clark was a little amused and excited. It was his first interrogation! So he decided to dress the part, morphing into the craggy face of the smoking man from the show X-Files.

The stage was set when Clark entered the room. Rickman was cuffed to his chair. The room was dim, except for a bright light that shone in Rickman's face. Rickman's face was panicky, his eyes were darting around the room until Clark sat down across the table from Rickman, Clark's face was still in the shadows, indistinct. Rickman strained his gaze, trying to see who sat across from him. Clark's voice was raspy, as if from years of smoking cigarettes.

"Mr. Rickman. I think it's about time we had a talk."

"Who are you people?! Why am I here?!" Rickman's voice was high pitched from his nervousness.

"We both know why you are here, Mr. Rickman." Clark sets down different files on Rickman's life as he makes each point. When he was born. Where he went to school. His grades. Who he dated. His poor showing in sales, until the meteor shower happened. Then his meteor rise in sales. His founding of Rickman Industries. His failures to ensure safety codes were followed, thus polluting the environment. The lawsuits against him. How much money he owes, and how desperate he is.

"As you can see, we know all about you Mr. Rickman. We know about the gift of persuasion you received during the meteor shower." Rickman gulps deeply. He knows he's caught, and fears the worst. "Your problem, Mr. Rickman, is you simply don't know how to utilize your gift. You were small time before the gift, and your attempt to use your gift to move up in the world is particularly…embarrassing."

Clark's statement provoked an angry diatribe from Rickman, all about his problems and how he couldn't get a break, and no one understands how tough he's got it.

"Yes, yes. Your life is difficult and everything you do just drives you further into a corner. Poor Mr. Rickman." False sympathy just oozes from Clark's voice. Rickman does a decent imitation of a fish, his open mouth gaping, but no words coming out. "Now pay attention carefully Mr. Rickman. You are at a crossroads. This is perhaps the most important choice of your life."

Clark paused to make sure that Rickman was paying close attention. "You have two choices. First choice: You, Mr. Rickman, will work for us. You will receive training. You will go on missions that we assign you. You will succeed, or you will not like the consequences. There will also be the carrot. You will be provided a measure of luxury. The level of reward is dependent on your performance."

Clark paused to allow Rickman to fully digest his first choice.

"Wh-what's the second choice?" Rickman finally asked.

"Second choice: You disappear, Mr. Rickman." Clark stated with finality.

"That's not much of a choice." Rickman plaintively complained.

"And yet, it's the only choice you get."

"Yeah, okay then. I choose number one. I'll work for you." Rickman weakly stated.

"Excellent choice Mr. Rickman. My associates will be along shortly to escort you. Sit tight for now." Clark stated and then he left the room.

Once Clark left the room, he contacted Jorv to pass on some orders regarding Rickman. "Jorv, I want you to set up a new identity and face for Rickman. I don't want our new employee to be associated with the mess he left behind. He'll be so much more useful to us as a human intelligence source than stupidly brainwashing people to sign contracts that they immediately forget about. Talk about burning bridges and one shot deals, Rickman was a serious idiot."

Clark planned to use Rickman and Tippet to pump people for information, not to force people into stupid contracts that screwed them over. With the information they could obtain, negotiations would be so much easier. They would know the other side's bottom line, what they needed, what they'd be willing to work with.

And that's just one possibility. In every state there were always obstructionist politicians that made it difficult to expand into their state. Everything from permits dragging on for months, to being directly denied, to politicians taking bribes to oppose his company. With Rickman and Tippet's ability they would be able to directly find out why they are being obstructionists. They could also find out the politicians dirty little secrets so they could neutralize the politicians from being obstacles.

So many plans and deals never get put on computers because then it would leave a trail of evidence. These two men's abilities will smooth the path Clark's company is on.

"Make sure to give him training on how to be subtle on his use of his powers, and what to do in a situation where he finds someone has resisted his power of persuasion. Oh, and be sure to Lo-jack him. We don't want our little worker to get lost or abuse his powers when we don't want him to." Clark finished.

"I'm already filling in his schedule, Kal-El. Are you going to make the same offer to Kyle Tippet?" Jorv asked.

"No, I'll offer a more traditional employee packet to Tippet. The only reason I was so hard on Rickman is because he tried to whammy my earth dad to sign away his farm for a pittance. Bastard tried to screw over my family, so he's going to work that debt off. After everything Rickman has done and how out of control he seemed to be getting, he's lucky he can be so useful, otherwise he would have just disappeared."

Clark then offered a job to Kyle Tippet, with a great salary and benefits, training and opportunities to see the world. At first Tippet was very taciturn, until Clark told him how they had already reigned in Rickman, and how he was impressed with Tippet's moral fortitude for not abusing his power. He promised Tippet that he wouldn't be doing anything (too) immoral with his powers, and that if he chose not to take the deal he could go right back to his sculptures in his forest. After some consideration, Tippet chose to take the deal, and Clark now had two intelligence gatherers for his company.

Clark then gave Jorv orders to keep an eye out for any more signs of meta-humans. Sure some of them just love the sense of power and superiority their powers give them. But Clark is sure that many of them are just trying to get by in life, and only turn to their powers to solve their problems when they have exhausted every other means.

If Clark's company can come in and solve those meta-human's problems with a bit of money and a job opportunity, it's definitely a good investment. They would get new, loyal employees that have extensive skill sets. And if their special employees just happen to decide to use their powers to help out in emergencies to save lives? And if their paycheck just happens to have a nice bonus for such extra curricular activities? Well, Clark is sure everyone will be happy in such cases.

* * *

The school year was over for Clark and his crew. The summer break had started last week. Early Tuesday morning found Clark sitting in between Chloe and Lana on a plane to England. Normally he would just fly himself to his destination, but since he's traveling with his crew that, except for Kara, can't fly on their own, he was relegated to the snail plane.

His girlfriends Lana and Chloe didn't really appreciate his humor in calling their mode of travel such a thing. They blamed it on him. Naturally. When he inquired as to why it was his fault, they told him it was because he hadn't figured out a way to let them fly as fast he does, so of course it's his fault.

'Huh, they actually have a point.' Clark thought. So he naturally delegated it to Jorv to figure out how to give them Kryptonian powers. If they were going to be with him in all ways, it's only right that they can keep up with him. If he has to resort to turning them full Kryptonian, well, he'll let them choose, of course. But he's pretty sure they've already made their choice.

As their plane was coming in for a landing Clark once again thought about their purpose for taking a "vacation" in England. Ever since he'd gotten the Harry Potter memories, he'd wanted to check out the situation in the wizarding world of Britain, to see how close it was. But he'd promised Kara and his girls that he wouldn't go without them.

When they left the airport, the first thing they did was to check into their hotel. Then they spent the evening wandering about London, enjoying the nightlife and music at one of the clubs. Clark was kept busy dancing with Lana and Chloe while fending off low life jerks that were jealous of his good fortune to have such hot girlfriends, and felt it was their right to cut in on the dancing. Chloe or Lana could have easily taken them out of course, but they claimed they liked seeing Clark go all caveman and protect his women.

The next day they were finally able to drag themselves out of the hotel after noon, and headed to Diagon Alley, to see what was up. The first clue Clark got that something was wrong was the broken doors of the pub, closely followed by the scent of smoke.

Clark looked at the pub with his X-ray vision, and was able to see that the Leaky Cauldron was empty of people.

"Something isn't right here guys, the pub is trashed and empty of people. Let's check out the alley, to see if there's anyone there we can question."

They closely followed Clark as he made his way to the entrance to the alley. The wall looked like it had been blasted out. The alley looked like a warzone. Some of the shops still stood, but many were burned to the ground. There were bodies laying on the ground here and there. Blood covered the ground around the bodies, which were horribly mutilated. Clark heard a couple of his friends lose their lunch behind him. He checked on his girlfriends and cousin first, and spent some time soothing them; he saw that Pete and Emily were comforting each other.

Clark saw movement at the end of the Alley in front of a large white walled building, Gringotts. When he looked closer, he noticed it was a couple of goblins shuffling out to survey the alley. Clark moved up to question them about what happened.

When the goblins saw Clark and his friends, they tensed, as if expecting an attack.

"Hello, we're not here to fight. What happened here? Who did this?" Clark asked.

One of the goblins spit on the ground, and growled out an answer. "Stupid wizard. It was the one you call You-Know-Who. He came here with his dark army this morning. After razing the alley he moved on to Hogwarts. But your kind will pay for this unprovoked attack on the Sovereign Goblin Nation!"

"Dude, we're not even from England. We had nothing to do with this!" Pete interjected.

"Whatever, filthy human. You all bear culpability" The goblin spat again as he and the other goblins trooped back into the walls of Gringotts.

"Man, those guys are some piece of work. Their building looks fine except for a few scorch marks, and they're complaining while the rest of the alley is destroyed, and people are lying dead." Pete grumbled about the ridiculous goblins. The rest of the crew could only agree.

Clark looked at his crew, assessing how they were doing. Despite being shaken by the sight of all the death and destruction, they seemed to be rallying back their spirit.

"So." Clark stated. "Who wants to go to a possible warzone at Hogwarts to see what's going on and possibly get some answers as to what's happening?"

They voted. The ayes had it.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: A bit ago I started writing an authors note responding to some of the reviews from earlier chapters in Becoming Clark. Then it got ridiculously long. I personally don't like long ANs mucking up what should be story, so I posted it in a new story, titled: Plot Bunnies, ANs, and other misc. chapter 1, if you're interested.

* * *

When Clark and his friends arrived at Hogwarts, they weren't sure what they expected to see. They knew Voldemort's Army had come here to attack earlier that day, but the sheer number of dead on the ground outside the castle walls stunned them.

Wizards, witches, acromantula, giants, werewolves, and house elves, all lay dead. The nature of many of the spells cast left many of the bodies torn apart. The blood had been stomped into the ground by the armies, creating a stinking muddy morass.

Clark heard one of his friends lose their lunch after seeing the gore and devastation. Turning to look, he saw Pete rubbing Emily's back in comfort. Clark turned to check on Lana, Chloe, and Kara to provide similar support. Kara seemed the most affected, remembering her home planet, but rallied herself to not break down.

"This doesn't feel like much of a light hearted adventure anymore." Chloe stated, echoing everyone's thoughts.

"One thing is for sure, this isn't the same world of the Harry Potter I got memories from during Halloween." Clark stated as he looked for survivors to question. "Does anyone want to hang back while we go looking for anyone we can get answers from?"

"No, I'm good now. I'll handle it." Emily stated firmly after settling her nerves. Everyone else echoed her statement. No one wanted to be left behind just because it was a little more gruesome than expected.

Clark set off for the castle, with the others following him, gingerly stepping past the dead. Clark tried to look into the castle to get some idea of what was happening inside, but the magic present was interfering with his vision. So Clark settled for scanning the battlefield for any signs of life.

After a few moments of scanning the many bodies, Clark realized that there were no survivors among the dead in the battlefield. That really spoke to the savagery of the battle. No survivors. Nobody was tossing stunning spells, they were all casting lethal spells. The fighting must have been bitter and desperate.

Clark soon arrived at the castle doors, which were blasted off their hinges. Making sure everyone was prepared to defend themselves, he led the way inside. Following the memories he had of the Castle, Clark made his way to the Great Hall. He was relatively sure that's where any survivors of the battle would congregate.

The Great Hall doors were ajar, and Clark could hear voices yelling, followed by screams of pain. Looking inside, he saw the Dark Lord Voldemort himself, stomping around and ranting. The bald, snakelike man was mocking the person he was torturing, throwing out crucios between taunts.

"Ssso you sssee, I win, Potter! I was alwaysss going to win!" The psychopathic Dark Lord hissed. "The only thing your resistance did wasss to make it more fun for me!"

Motioning to his friends to stay back for a moment, Clark inspected the Great Hall. He saw Riddle standing on the professors table while ranting and torturing Harry Potter. Potter was stuck to the wall behind the professors table, screaming in agony. Riddle had apparently severed his arms and legs during the torture session.

Standing to the right at the Slytherin table were five death eaters in their robes and masks. They appeared exhausted and wary of their insane leader as they watched Riddle torture the young man. Clark noticed a few more bodies lying on the Gryffindor table. The bodies were mutilated and chopped up.

Clark didn't like what he'd seen. He looked to his friends and saw their faces set in resolve. They wanted to do something to end this travesty. Clark quickly and quietly outlined a plan.

When everyone was ready, Clark gave the signal. He and Kara moved at the same time. Clark used his speed to fly right behind Voldemort. Without banter or giving Riddle time to react, Clark cast a piercing hex into the back of Riddle's head.

Kara on the other hand, flew at top speed and rammed the group of Death Eaters who weren't looking. She bowled them over, knocking them aside like pins. Pete, Lana, Chloe, and Emily followed behind Kara as fast as they could to attack each of the Death Eaters Kara bowled over.

Because of the practice at magic and their enhanced physiques, the group swiftly subdued the Death Eaters with stunners and bound them up in ropes. They wanted to be able to question them later to find out just how everything in the wizarding world devolved to such a bloody war.

Clark on the other hand didn't want to give Riddle a chance to rally. When he cast the piercing hex at the back of Riddle's head, he noticed it did minimal damage. Apparently the rituals Riddle performed enhanced his physical toughness. No matter.

Clark followed Riddle as he fell, pinning him to the ground as he cast spell after spell into Riddles body. After the 6th piercing hex, Clark's spells finally overcame Riddle's magic resistance and drilled a hole in Riddle's head.

The moment he saw success, Clark backed off from the body. Sure enough, a dark smoke like wraith oozed out of the construct body of Voldemort. The wraith shrieked threats at him, then flew out the building through a window.

"Look around for a big snake, guys. If you see it, kill it immediately!" Clark commanded.

Kara noticed the snake first as it tried to make its way out of the hall. A few well placed cutting curses left Nagini without a head. Moments after beheading the snake, the wailing of a dying horcrux was heard, confirming Clark's guess that Riddle had made Nagini a horcrux.

Clark then moved over to where Harry Potter had fallen from the wall, the sticking charm having ended when Riddle "died" again. Clark was somewhat surprised to see Potter still aware despite the ravaged state of his body. Clark tried what he could to ease his pain, casting some cushion and pain easing charms.

Taking stock of Potter's body, Clark saw that his arms had been removed at the shoulders. One leg had been taken off at the knee, while the other removed a few inches above the knee. It's likely that Riddle had been chopping him up a bit at a time while keeping him alive.

Harry tried to speak, but Clark saw that his tongue had been removed, making his mumbles difficult to understand.

Looking over at the horror struck faces of his girls, cousin, and friends, Clark thought about his options. "Guys, make sure those Death Eaters aren't going anywhere or waking up for a while. I'm gonna try some Legilimency to see if I can talk with Potter here." Giving them something to do seemed to give them some direction so they weren't dwelling on the grisly aftermath of the war they had wandered into.

Clark turned to Harry and explained what he was going to do. When he got a nod from Harry, Clark cast his spell.

* * *

Clark found himself in the Gryffindor common room, sitting on one end of a couch with Harry Potter on the other end. Harry had all his arms and legs in the shared mindscape they were communicating in.

"Thanks for coming in and nailing that bastard, even if it's too late to save me." Harry started out. "Voldemort force fed me some nasty poisons that he said would give me an agonizing death while forcing me to remain awake for it. He got tired of my mocking comments, so he cut out my tongue, then started working on the rest of me. The poison was too boring, he said."

"Well, that sucks." Clark didn't know what else to say.

Harry snort laughed. "Yeah, it does."

"Clark Kent." Clark introduced himself while holding out his hand to shake.

"Harry Potter." Harry shook his hand.

"So-" They both said at the same time.

Clark shook his head in amusement. "Let me go first. After I told you what brought us here, then you can tell me yours."

"Sure, why not. This is much better than feeling the poison." Harry concentrated and a butterbeer showed up in his hand for him to sip while listening.

"Nice." Clark noted, summoning up a Coke for himself. "Normally I wouldn't share this secret with anyone so quick, but since you're dying, I think I can trust you." Harry coughed up his butterbeer. "Too soon?"

"Nah, gallows humor suits me now." Harry nonchalantly proclaimed.

"Right. So, I'm an alien. Came from a different planet to Earth when my planet blew up." As Clark was speaking, on the wall in front of their couch, like a movie, the scene from Clark's memory of his last moments with his Krypton parents played. The scene then jumped to him waking up in the truck on Martha's lap.

"Our particular brand of humanoid life is able to absorb energy from the sun, store it up like a battery, and it gives us some great abilities. Like super strength, speed, flight, toughness, etc." As Clark was talking the screen showed some scenes of Clark exhibiting his abilities.

"Nice. That would be amazing to fly without a broom." Harry commented enviously.

"It is pretty sweet. But then I found out about magic, and the fact that I don't have any or know anything about it. Last Halloween I had found out that this chaos mage was going to be casting a spell in a town called Sunnydale, which sits on a dimensional weak spot called the Hell Mouth. The spell would turn everyone into their costume for the evening to cause a bit of chaos."

Clark had decided he was going to skip explaining about his first attempt and his decade spent as Bulma. Harry didn't need to know about that. It totally wasn't because he was embarrassed.

"So I got the mage to enchant a costume of a good magic user that would be under a time dilation field so we could trade information. In the computer I left a lot of science and tech information. In order to get that information, he would need to trade his knowledge of magic. And I hoped that if he remained in my body for some time, I might pick up some useful magic abilities."

Clark paused to sip at his cola, letting Harry absorb that information.

"I ended up dressing as you." Harry stared at Clark with a befuddled look. "Well, not you you. More like a you from an alternate world that made different decisions in life, and didn't end up where you are now. I don't think the spell was supposed to act the way it did, but I experienced his life's memories up until he actually made his way to the town where I was, which was when he was 18. Let me play a highlights reel for you, so you can see."

Clark started showing the basics of the alternate Harry's life; of how he had confronted Quirrelmort at the end of first year, and what effect the Horcrux knowledge had on him. Being friends with Hermione, Luna, Ginny, and later Fleur. How he saved his Godfather. How he dealt with Malfoy, the Horcruxes, Riddle, Pettigrew, Snape, and finally Dumbledore. And how he had a decent life with people that loved him.

Looking over at Harry, Clark was surprised to see Harry crying.

"Could you show me the first year Halloween, and how the troll thing happened?" Harry asked.

"Sure." Clark responded. Then he showed how Ron had made Hermione feel so bad she stayed in the bathroom all afternoon. How when Harry heard about the troll, he forced Ron to go find Hermione with him, and how Harry jumped on the troll's back to distract the thing until it was knocked out by its own club. Then how Hermione became Harry's friend after that.

"That's where it all went wrong for me." Harry whispered.

"What do you mean?" Clark asked.

"In first year, when I heard about the troll, I wanted to go find her." In a hoarse voice Harry explained. "But Ron complained too much, saying we should just tell a prefect. I stupidly listened to him, and we told Percy. But that asshole Percy just told me she would be fine, and that she was probably in the dorms already. He wouldn't listen to anything I said, and when I tried to run off to the bathroom anyway, he petrified me and dragged me to the common room. Because of Percy, that bastard, and Ron, Hermione died that night."

Clark put his hand on Harry's shoulder in commiseration.

"Because of two bastard Weasleys, that smart, kind girl died. I never got a chance to get to know her like I wanted to. Seeing what could have been with her, Ginny, Luna, Fleur and I makes it all the worse. I never spoke to another Weasley again after that. The only person I made friends with after that was Neville."

"In second year Ginny Weasley must have gotten the Diary Horcrux, because there was a bunch of students being petrified throughout the year. Eventually Ginny disappeared and the message was left on the wall that her bones would remain in the Chamber of Secrets. No one ever found out how to get down there. I never even got to know her because she was 'just another Weasley'. Damn, I wish I'd tried now. I never even got to meet Luna, either. Damn. All because I listened to Ron and Percy stopped me from saving her."

Harry talked as if finally getting the weight off his chest, finally purging the poison from his mind. In Harry's mind, all the horrible things in his life really started getting worse from that one night, that one wrong decision to listen to his then friend Ron instead of doing what he thought was right.

"Things just kept getting worse over the years. I found out about Sirius being my godfather, and that he was innocent. I thought, 'finally, someone who can be family, who can get me out of the hell that is the Dursleys.' But he got caught and kissed by the dementors at the end of my third year."

As Harry spoke, the scenes from his memories appeared on the wall so Clark could see.

"Fourth year I ended up in the tournament. No one was on my side except Neville. I didn't get any training. I barely out flew the dragon, and got the egg. Crouch disguised as Moody gave me some gillyweed so I could stay in the running and fall into his trap at the third task. Did you know the bastards designated Ron bloody Weasel as my hostage? Fucking wankers."

"When the cup transported me and Diggory to the graveyard, Diggory was killed by Pettigrew. They used my blood to resurrect Voldemort. Then, he used the killing curse on me. I died then."

Seeing Clark's incredulous stare, Harry snorted. "Yeah, apparently since I still had the Horcrux in my scar, the piece of Voldemort's soul paid the death toll, and I came back to my body after Voldemort and his Death Eaters had left the graveyard. Unfortunately I was still tied up. But Dumbledore found me later. The bloody bastard probably knew all about the trap and ritual if he knew where to find me. But I didn't put it together until later."

"So I guess without the Horcrux, Dumbledore finally decided to get off his ass and train me. Over the next two years I learned Occlumency and as much battle magic as I could. But Dumbledore had found the ring Horcrux and got himself a flesh rotting curse. He died at the end of my sixth year."

"Serves him right, but his timing sucks." Clark commented.

Harry just nodded in agreement. "Dumbledore died and Voldemort took over the ministry. Everyone was panicking. Me and Neville decided we had to have some kind of base for the resistance. So we took over Hogwarts and encouraged everyone to join us. Not too many did at first. Not until the ministry came out with their Muggleborn Camp idea. Sounded too much like the Nazi Holocaust camps back in World War 2. Wouldn't be surprised if that's where Umbridge, the bitch, got the idea. So all the muggleborn and most of the light families gathered at Hogwarts to avoid being taken one at a time."

Harry paused for a moment to think about his last year. "Throughout the year we basically waged guerilla warfare. I think Riddle thought that since he captured the ministry, everyone would just roll over for him. Idiot."

Clark couldn't help but darkly chuckle along with Harry. Voldemort was an idiot.

"Moody was our war director, and with Dumbledore gone, there was no one telling him to 'give them a second chance', or 'they can be redeemed, we can't kill them, it would make us as bad as them.' So we started using Voldemort's own tactics against him. A strike team would attack his supporters in the middle of the night. Blitzkrieg in through the wards, kill them, and get out of there before reinforcements came."

Harry faintly smiled in remembrance. "I tell you, it felt good to finally get some payback from those scum. Unfortunately we lost Neville to a trap Lucius Malfoy set. I killed Malfoy as payback for Neville a few days later." Harry savagely grinned at the memory. "But, about a week ago Voldemort finally got tired of losing his supporters one by one. So they besieged the castle, and finally broke in earlier today." Harry sadly shook his head at their loss.

Clark sat there in silence with Harry, contemplating what he'd learned. The walls of the common room started wobbling and shimmering out of solidity.

Harry looked around at the destabilizing room. "Well, looks like this is about the end for me. Thanks for listening, Clark."

The room dissolved, and Clark was back in the Great Hall, crouched in front of the ruined body of Harry Potter.

Harry looked at Clark, and despite lacking a tongue, carefully spoke. "I just wish we could go back and do it again and get it right this time."

**"Granted."** A voice came from behind Clark. Before he could spin around and figure out who just spoke, darkness overcame Clark's vision.

* * *

Clark woke up to the sound and motion of a running train. Looking around, he saw he was alone in a compartment. The door and blinds were closed. Getting up from the seat, he noticed he felt smaller than he should be. Looking at his faint reflection in the window, he looked like he was 11 again. Well, then. That's interesting.

He was dressed in Hogwarts school robes with no color, indicating he hadn't been sorted yet. Looking around a bit more, he saw a trunk on the luggage rack with his name on it. In his pocket was a wand. Even more curious-er.

Doing a quick check, Clark determined that he still had his solar battery charge, so he had his Kryptonian abilities. That was comforting. He was still uncomfortable about the time he'd been changed by the chaos spell and lost his powers. Feeling vulnerable in the middle of vampire country had sucked. Running through his magical abilities, Clark determined that he still had his metamorphmagus ability and full control of his magic. Seems like the only thing affected was his age.

Clark decided he would go through the trunk with his name on it later. For now the most important thing was to determine if he was the only one de-aged and put on the train. 'Wait, was it only being de-aged?'

He pulled out his wand and cast the time/date charm. 11:15 a.m. September 1st, 1991. So, he was on the Hogwarts express on his way for the first day of school for Harry? Thinking back to the last thing that happened before he blacked out, he thought he had an idea. 'First though' Clark thought, 'Check to see if I came back alone or not.'

While levitating his trunk behind him, Clark left the compartment and started moving down the train to see if his friends had joined him. After several compartments, he moved to another car, and immediately spotted an 11 year old Pete who was also checking compartments.

"Yo, Pete. Fancy meeting you here!" Clark laughed.

"Hey, Clark. Man, am I glad to see you. This is Twilight Zone trippy, I'm telling you." Pete responded.

"No joke. Let's see if we can find the girls first, then we'll talk about it."

"Sure, sure. I can wait a bit to find out why we're on a train. And 11 again. No problem." Clark laughed again at Pete's discomfort. "Give me a second to get the trunk with my name on it. And we'll go on down the train."

Nodding in agreement, Clark and Pete soon continued down the train. In each car they came across they found one more member of their group. Clark insisted they continue on, checking compartments to see if they could find little 11 year old Harry Potter. He thought it likely Harry had come back too.

When Clark found Harry in one of the last compartments, he saw him sitting with Ron Weasley. He could see that Harry was barely tolerating the talkative Ron, so he decided he would intervene. After getting the rest of the group into an empty compartment that they expanded a bit to fit, Clark burst into Harry's compartment.

"Hey, Harry, we made it!" Clark exclaimed as he opened the door. "We got a compartment just a bit down the way, so why don't you join us!" Levitating Harry's trunk, Clark pushed him out of the compartment and down to theirs before Ron could say anything. Despite being confused at who he was, Harry went along with it because he _really_ didn't want to continue sitting with Ron, and he was curious who this was. This didn't happen the first time through on his first train ride to Hogwarts.

Closing the door to the compartment Clark turned to Harry. "Nice to meet you under better circumstances. Clark Kent." And Clark held out his hand which Harry limply shook.

"This isn't a dream? Just how did we come back?" Harry asked.

"Introductions first!" Clark cheerfully exclaimed. "The last time we all met things were a bit…messy. So you haven't met the gang yet. These two lovely ladies are my amazing girlfriends, Lana Lang and Chloe Sullivan." Clark got twin kisses on the cheek. His girls were awesome. "Here is my wonderful cousin, Kara Kent. This is my best bud, Pete Ross. And his wonderful girl, Emily Dinsmore. And this, is Harry Potter, everyone."

Everyone did the shaking of the hands, and polite greetings.

"Okay, introductions are over. I've got a theory on how this happened." Clark started. "When I was in Sunnydale I learned a bit about demons and vampires and whatnot. There was one type of demon, called a Vengeance Demon. From what I gather, there are a bunch of them, and each of them have their own…territory, so to speak. Like one vengeance demon will focus on scorned women. Another will focus on lost orphans, etc. I'm not entire sure how it works, but they seem to derive personal power from granting wishes. And the last thing you said was something along the lines of: 'I W-I-S-H we could do it all over again, and do it right this time'. And then we heard a voice say 'granted' in that deep demony tone."

Clark looked around at the group to gauge how they felt. They seemed to be tracking. "By the way, avoid using the w-word from now on. You never know who is listening or what might result from an accidental wish. Sometimes these wishes end up as monkey paws wishes, twisting what was wanted by using the literal meaning to give what the wisher didn't really mean."

Harry looked nervous. "You think this is whole situation is going to go bad? It can't be worse than what I had before!"

Clark bopped him on the head lightly.

"Hey! No challenging fate to one up itself around my girls!" Clark demanded of Harry while his girls giggled. "I'm not trying to be pessimistic about finding ourselves 11 years old and in the past. I'm just trying to warn all of us to find other ways to express ourselves than to use the w-word. That way they can't use our words against us in a moment of inattention."

Clark was happy to see everyone agreeing to be careful.

"Clark, it seems that whoever granted the wish wants us to go to Hogwarts with Harry." Chloe stated while pointing out their robes and trunks as evidence. "I for one am interested in attending. I mean, if we're stuck in the past as 11 year olds, it would be interesting to go. It might be fun."

"Is there any way to reverse what's happened and get ourselves back to being our real ages?" Emily asked. "Not to mention if we're here, what will our families do when they find us missing? Or are there two of us now in the past?"

"Those are very good questions. In a bit I'll go check on our family's situation, and come back with a solution to that." Clark answered. "As to reversing the spell, I don't know of any way to do that." Clark wasn't willing to mention out loud about how breaking the vengeance demon's totem of power will revert the wish. If the demon was still hanging around there was no reason to make it hostile by expressing a desire to rob it of its power. And they don't even know what the demon looks like, let alone what its totem was, making the task prohibitively difficult.

Besides which Clark felt a sort of brotherhood for Harry after his Halloween experience. He wanted Harry to have his second chance to not live such a nightmare life. And after seeing what might await Harry if he played his cards right, namely his relationships with Hermione, Luna, Ginny, and Fleur, it was only right for Clark to not mess it up for him. Good friends don't cockblock their friends, after all.

"I know I got the memories of a magic user from Halloween, but this situation is outside their experience." Clark smoothly continued on. "So I think we're stuck in the past. The only way out is the long way of growing up. Besides which, after seeing how horrible Harry's past future was, we would be poor friends if we didn't help him out here." Clark claps his hand on Harry's back in solidarity. "With all of us watching his back, he's got this in the bag."

Suddenly reminded of the results of the bloody war, everyone joined in on expressing that they would be there for Harry. Clark noticed how much it meant to him. Good, it's about time Harry got some allies that will help him and not hinder.

They were interrupted by the door opening. Clark looked over and saw a girl with wild bushy brown hair standing at the door.

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost his." She asked.

Looking over out of the corner of his eye, Clark noticed that Harry was stuck in an emotional feedback loop, unable to settle on what to say for the moment. This just would not do. Clark gave Harry a strong shoulder nudge. "Nope, haven't seen a toad. But Harry here was just about to stretch his legs, so he can help you look."

"Oh, thank you. You don't have to, though, if you don't want to." Hermione stated quickly. From what Clark could gather, Hermione was in a state of desperate hope for friends while conflicted with her fear that Hogwarts would be just like her other schooling, and everyone would hate her.

"Oh, uh, no. Er..That is, I mean. I don't mind helping you." Harry stammered as he got up to join her.

"Well, I've already checked every compartment in this car, so we can move on to the next one. Are you going into your first year? I am too. I'm so excited to be learning magic. I'm the first one in my family, you know. Oh, where are my manners! I'm Hermione Granger, pleased to meet you." Hermione rambled as Harry joined her outside the compartment.

When the door shut, closing off the sound of their conversation, snickers broke out among the group.

"Oh dear. Harry was being quite shy, wasn't he?" Emily joked.

"Poor guy, he's not going to be able to get a word in edgewise." Pete laughed.

Clark had shown them a lot of the memories of the Harry Potter he'd gotten from Halloween, so everyone was aware of how close those two could become, and everyone was rooting for him. "It looks like they are off to a good start." Clark laughed.

"So, since we're stuck in the past, where are we going to live when we're not at Hogwarts?" Kara asked.

"Good question." Lana commented. "I have some family here in England, but going to them would raise more questions than we need about how we got here."

"Did anyone look in their trunk yet?" Chloe asked from out of left field. "I mean, they just appeared with us from out of nowhere, so maybe there's something there for us…" She trailed off speculatively.

One by one they checked their trunks and found that there was a letter for each of them detailing where their summer accommodations would be. Apparently a large house had been set aside as their summer abode so they would all be together. Convenient. Suspiciously convenient. Should they look this gift horse in the mouth?

Clark also discovered that everything he had on him at the time he'd been wished back in time was in his trunk. At Clark's urging, everyone soon had their communication pieces out and placed in their ears again so they could remain in touch at any time.

"I'm going to fly back to the states real quick to check on our families and to touch base with Jorv so he knows what's going on, so he doesn't do something drastic if he stumbles across us accidentally." Clark told his friends. "I'll be back soon." Clark got a farewell kiss on the cheek from Chloe and Lana. It's good to be him.

Opening the window, Clark disillusioned himself, and then flew out the window. Orienting himself, he soon opened up full throttle on his way home.

On arrival near the Kent home, Clark used his abilities to scope out the joint, and saw that his past self as well as the gang were in school. He quickly flew over to Metropolis to check on Chloe, and saw she was there too. Good, at least that part of the past wouldn't need too much extra work to remain the same. As much as he wanted to help Harry, he also didn't want to mess up his timeline in order to do it.

Nodding in satisfaction, Clark turned north, and sped his way off to his Fortress of Badassitude. Upon arrival, Jorv first scanned him to determine that yes, there were two Clark Kents. Clark then spent the next couple of hours updating Jorv on his past timeline. It was amazing how much information a Kryptonian with super speed and superfast thought processes could convey to his super advanced A.I.

After giving Jorv the update on what was happening, they began planning on how to ensure his timeline remained the same. Jorv would keep quiet about the situation, not letting the younger Clark know about it, until it was time to send Clark and the rest of the gang back in time to help Harry. When the younger Clark and Crew traveled back it would stabilize the time loop, allowing them to move forward past the loop.

So until then Jorv would be setting up everything needed for that jump to the past. Clark had spent a bit of time imputing everything he learned from Bulma and the alternate Harry Potter into Jorv's database. This way Jorv could have a time machine ready for them as well as prepping a way to regress their ages so they would go back as 11 year olds. And finally, they figured out a way to copy Harry Potter's memories of his disaster past that almost ended in death for everyone.

When they arrived in the past they would sneakily add those memories to the 11 year old Harry Potter to keep the loop intact and help Harry move forward. As bad as it sounded to traumatize an 11 year old like that, in their defense, after Harry assimilated those memories, he would no longer be a traumatized 11 year old. He would be a traumatized 17 year old. So that made it all better.

At least then he would have friends and a few girls who wouldn't mind helping to heal the poor broken lad. Aww, who is Clark kidding. With everything that would now be going for the young man, Harry was going to cause envy and jealousy wherever he goes. 'Meh, not my problem if haters gonna hate.' Clark laughed to himself.

With everything set up with Jorv to make sure his timeline was good, it was time to do what Clark had been putting off for so long. To ensure that while Clark was over in Scotland he had good communications with Jorv, it was time to put a satellite up in orbit. Which meant that Clark had to go up into space.

Intellectually, Clark knew that Superman could survive in space without a suit. And unfiltered access to the sun's rays would power him up good. Clark knew all this, but he still had that mental hang up from living his previous life as a normal human that "Space = Bad".

It's like in the movie, The Abyss, where they had the super oxygenated water that would allow a human to breathe water. The idea in the movie was that if there was water on both sides of the suit, the water pressure wouldn't be trying to pop the little bubble of air, or something along those lines. But the scene where the little mouse and then the humans first started to breathe the water always stuck with him. They would panic at first, thrashing about because the body knows that "Breathing Water = Bad".

It didn't really matter that intellectually they knew they'd be fine. And similarly, Clark knew with his solar charge, he would be fine in space. But he'd been putting off the first flight into space because of that niggling fear in the back of his mind. Due to the necessity of a communication link with Jorv, it was time to put his fear to rest.

It wouldn't do for him to let a little unease turn into a full blown phobia. That would be as stupid as Superman having a fear of heights to artificially slow down his full use of his powers for "reasons".

Oh wait, that's been done before. What a stupid idea for pointless, manufactured drama.

Throwing those silly meta thoughts to the back of his mind, Clark picked up the case of satellites. They were pretty small. Each satellite was the size of a baseball. Not bad. Jorv almost demanded that as long as he was going to put a couple satellites up, there was no reason not to go for full coverage of Earth. Clark couldn't disagree with the A.I.

'Up, up, and away!' Clark thought as he flew straight up. 'Okay, that joke fell flat.' He punned. 'With humor the pun will never end.' Clark thought towards the fourth wall, laughing at all the hate that was probably flowing. 'Hate of the pun will lead to the dark side. Love of the pun will probably do the same, though. At least we'll have cookies.' He consoled himself.

Looking down at the beautiful view of the planet for the first time while floating unharmed in space, it was a wondrous moment for Clark. He took a mental snapshot of this moment and this feeling. He wanted to remember this feeling of awe at the beauty, majesty, and sheer size of creation.

Clark knew that in the comic book world of DC, Superman was a Big Deal, one of the top dogs. But sitting here, looking at the enormity of the world and everything it contains, and knowing that this was just one small planet among countless stars and planets and galaxies, Clark didn't feel like a Big Deal.

In Clark's mind, to be a Big Deal, meant to have a huge impact on people's lives. In the comics Superman and the rest of the Justice League were so busy saving people, being visible, and _making a difference_ that they became Big Deals. Talk shows, governments, businesses, school kids, adults. Everyone was interested in them. Everyone wanted to know about their lives, their hobbies, their opinions.

And in Clark's mind, you can't live like that for long without it shaping your opinion of yourself. You would eventually begin to see yourself as a Big Deal. Eventually you start to believe that your opinion matters more than most because you are a Big Deal.

Clark knew there were some DC stories where in some realities the Justice League becomes the fascist dictators over humanity. They begin to limit humanity in what technology they can have access to. They set curfews and morality laws. They govern over the human race as if they are gods. They have forgotten that they themselves are human.

And that whole mess is another reason why Clark wants to stay away from the spandex brigade. The only people that Clark wants to be a big deal for are his family and friends. They are what matter to him. The people two states over or two countries away don't need to be involved in his life like he's some celebrity, or a moral arbiter. He doesn't know or care about their lives, why should they care about his?

This attitude of distancing himself from people he doesn't know wouldn't stop Clark from helping someone in front of him who were having a hard time, or who were in danger. Clark isn't that heartless. But there's only so much one man can do. Choosing how to spend his time and energy is every man's prerogative. And Clark doesn't feel like listening to the pissing and moanings of naysayers telling him he's doing it wrong.

All these ideas, thoughts, and feelings passed through Clark's mind as he gazed down at the Earth and felt like he was just a small part of the vast cosmos. He had his place in life with good family and friends who loved him. He liked that in this life he had the scientific and technology advantage with Jorv to secretly push the human race forward over the next decades. As he improved the planet and humanity as a whole, it would create a better home that was well defended for his family to live on.

And he loved that he had the power, both physical and financial, to have that freedom to do what he wants. Why would he then decide to abrogate other human's freedom by becoming a dictator when he loves his own freedom so much? He's not enough of a dick for that.

Spinning around in circles and loop de loops just for the heck of it, Clark then made his way back to England. There was one more thing to do before rejoining his friends.

* * *

Floating outside the Ministry of Magic while disillusioned, Clark was casting spells to detect what defenses were in place. Alarms to go off when non-ministry users cast magic and rune based locking spells.

'That's it?' Clark thought. 'Well, it is a public government office, can't have anything too nasty, I suppose. It makes sense then of how in the books a bunch of fourth and fifth year students easily got in. All the Death Eaters had to do was disable the locks and detection spells, and let the prey wander into the trap.'

Right as Clark was about to make his move, he stopped and bopped himself on the forehead. 'I'm making this too hard on myself. Duh. Alternate Harry got all of Riddle's memories. Riddle had a Death Eater in the Department of Mysteries, so he knows all about it.'

Clark quickly reviewed the memories of the ministry and DoM. With that knowledge in the forefront of his mind, Clark easily slipped past all the locks, alarms, and wards.

A few minutes later, Clark was floating in front of the cabinet holding the Time Turners. Should he swipe them all? Or only take a few?

Looking at the log detailing that there were three time turners checked out, two to Dumbledore and one to the head of the DoM, Clark decided he would swipe them all and replace them with conjured fakes. That should keep anyone from learning of the theft until it was too late to use a time turner to go back and look at who was committing the theft.

Seeing as Clark could detect no one hanging around watching him through his Kryptonian senses or magic, he decided it was the right decision to make. And it would help prevent anyone from mucking around too much with time. At least more than the Vengeance Demon had already done. Clark didn't want his life to end in a time loop because someone decided to be a busybody about his group's activities.

After placing all the time turners in a box into his bag that he'd put an expansion charm on, Clark made his way to the super secret DoM Library. All the books, tomes, and knowledge that the DoM researched was stashed there. Looking at the huge library, Clark shook his head in dismay at the huge job ahead of him. Good thing he's so quick.

Clark began duplicating all the books in the library, stuffing the copies into his bag. He and his friends would sort this all later.

The last stop Clark made was to the item storage. All the magical items the DoM or Ministry confiscated went there to be studied and kept out of the hands of the common wizard, witch, or muggle. Looking at the enormous expanded space, Clark was impressed. The ceiling of the storage facility was about thirty feet high, and it went back for what looked like miles. The shelves were packed with boxes. A few of the boxes closest to him had "Warehouse 12" stamped on the side. Further down the row were some boxes labeled "Warehouse 13". Huh, who knew?

There was just too much here to sort out the useful items from the drek. Clark decided he'd come back later. Before leaving he made a copy of the catalogue books so he could decide what he'd get when he came back to the storage facility.

* * *

After using his purloined Time Turner, Clark rejoined his friends on the train and filled them in on what was going on and how they would handle the time loop. Everyone was quite relieved that things would work out okay and that they wouldn't have to worry about their family while they had their seven year adventure/vacation.

It was also a bonus that by tomorrow they would all have access to Jorv and his database again so they could continue learning while stuck in boring classes at Hogwarts that they'd already covered. So, business as usual.

A little later Harry rejoined them with Hermione and Neville in tow. Clark and his group's easy acceptance of the two made them quite happy that they wouldn't be going into school all alone.

A couple hours later a young Draco Malfoy with his two lackeys made his arrogant appearance. From how Harry verbally ran circles around Malfoy and made fun of him, Clark could tell that Harry still carried a huge grudge against all things Malfoy.

Clark just smiled and let Harry take care of his own business however he wanted. Clark at least had memories of a Harry Potter that didn't let the name Malfoy survive very long. Whereas this Harry had to suffer Malfoy for six years and lost some good friends to the bastards. Clark felt it was only right to let Harry vent his spleen.

They soon arrived at the Hogsmeade station, and followed Hagrid to the boats. Clark sat with Chloe and Lana. Kara joined Harry, Hermione, and Neville. Pete and Emily ended up in a boat with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbot.

As they crossed the lake and saw Hogwarts all lit up at night, Clark simply enjoyed the view. He then looked at his girls, and saw how entranced and happy they were to be here, having an adventure. Even if that adventure was simply going to school. A magic school.

Clark sat back, enjoying being able to watch Lana and Chloe have fun.

The introduction by Professor McGonagall went as normal, with the witch presenting herself as a stern no nonsense educator. The ghosts did their usual scare the nervous firsties schtick. And finally they got to the sorting.

Clark was wondering where the hat would put him. Should he demand a specific house?

As Clark was pondering that, Hermione was put into Gryffindor. And then it was Clark's turn. 'Let the dice fall where it may.' Clark decided to let the hat decide his house for him.

When the hat was put on, Clark could hear the hat's voice in his head. [Interesting. Very interesting.]

When the hat didn't say anything for a bit, Clark got a little impatient. 'So, where-' he started to think.

[Shhh.] The hat interrupted. [Let me finish all these fanfics you've got in your head first.]

Clark sighed.

A few moments later the hat spoke again in his head. [Thanks. That was fun.] "Ravenclaw!" The hat finished out loud.

Clark blanked out for a moment. Wasn't he supposed to have a conversation with the hat about his past, his plans, which house he'd be best in, or at least…talk a bit? Clark felt a little gypped to be honest. Oh well.

Clark took his place at the Ravenclaw table.

Kara soon joined the Gryffindors at their table. Lana and Chloe got themselves sorted into Ravenclaw with Clark. Pete and Emily went into Hufflepuff. Harry, Hermione, and Neville joined Kara at the Gryffindor table.

After the feast Clark sent a message over the communication device that they would meet up the next morning before breakfast to do some planning. Kara would let Harry know. They had had a long day, and it was better they all get some sleep for now.

* * *

The next morning Clark got up early and gathered breakfast for seven from the house elves before meeting everyone on the seventh floor. They got the Room of Requirement set up for a meeting and planning session for after they ate breakfast.

The first thing after breakfast that they did was to go into more depth of the history of Harry and alternate Harry. This way they had a timeline and list of tasks to do to demolish their enemy before the war could even start.

One of the tasks that Harry was not willing to wait on was easily solved by Clark by sending orders to Jorv to send a drone with a shrunken trunk to Azkaban. Sirius was stunned, shoved into the trunk, and flown off to recover from his stay in Azkaban. Jorv meanwhile left a Human Form Robot to be the body double of Sirius in his cell in Azkaban.

Harry was happy that his godfather was safe and free from Azkaban for now. They had decided that they would follow the timeline of the alternate Harry for the first year, for the most part, until the Horcrux could be taken out of Harry's head, care of the shade of Riddle. That way Harry could gain all the knowledge of Riddle and they could be positive about their intel in this world.

The locations of the Horcruxes, the enslavement of the Black sisters, and the duplicity and manipulations of Dumbledore were all things that could be the same in alternate Harry's universe as this one. Or they could be vastly different. That was the nature of alternate universes, after all.

By leaving the HFR of Sirius Black in Azkaban for now, they could keep as few variables as possible from popping up. And this way Sirius would be safe from anything shady happening to him when it was finally time to bring Pettigrew to the DMLE. They weren't going to leave Pettigrew free to sit in the same room as Harry and Neville, after all. They would be capturing him the following night and replace him with a rat until it was time to turn him in.

After the planning session had ended, Harry turned to Clark with a question on his lips. "How much should I let Neville and Hermione know? I mean, Neville and I became good friends. He was just as good as me with magic once he replaced his wand in second year, and he was a good, loyal friend. It hurt when I lost him to an ambush from the Malfoys. And telling Hermione she died in her first year in a lost timeline? Could she even handle that information? But keeping all these secrets from my friends feels…wrong."

Clark moved over and patted Harry on the shoulder in reassurance. "It would probably be wise to wait a bit, to solidify your friendship with them first. Cause in this timeline you've only just met them. If someone came to you with such a wild story on the second day you knew them, you would likely freak out too." Clark paused to let Harry think about it. "But it's your decision when you want to bring them in. We'll support you, and them."

The rest of the group chimed in with their sentiments of support for Harry, which reassured him that everything would be alright.

When they finally finished the planning, they relaxed for the rest of the time and played with the Room of Requirement. They tried to find the limits of what it could make. Thanks to Kara's memories, everyone got to see what her and Clark's home planet of Krypton was like. They were suitably impressed, as was Clark. He'd only been on planet for a few weeks before it was destroyed, and he was just a baby. So he didn't remember too much about it. So being able to see the planet and some of the cities as they were was a sight worth remembering.

After a good night of sleep to keep everyone's days and nights synced, they used the time turners to go back to the morning of September 2nd to join the rest of the students.

Over the next two months Clark and the rest of his group made good friends with Neville and Hermione. Unlike all the other students, they had no problems affiliating with students not from their house. Especially since they have been friends for so long. Any time they weren't in class, they were hanging out. With pretty much everyone in the group easily able to finish assignments without nagging, Hermione never had to put herself in the "nagging them for their own good" mind set, and was able to be relaxed amongst her new friends.

As the week to Halloween counted down, Clark could tell that something was bothering both Hermione and Neville. They seemed a bit jumpier, and would often times go into long quiet contemplation as they stared at nothing with increasing frequency as Halloween approached.

In the Great Hall at the Halloween feast Clark saw Harry sitting at the Gryffindor table with Neville and Kara on one side, and Hermione on the other. Clark smiled to himself at how protective Harry was looking of Hermione on this night.

When Quirrel made his poor drama performance of an announced troll and then fainted, Clark noticed that Hermione and Neville fainted for real. Very strange. Using his communicator, Clark had the group stay back at the Gryffindor table to protect their unconscious friends while Clark went to hunt a troll.

As Clark sped off, making sure no one saw him, he pulled a large sword out of his expandable bag. He'd had Jorv make the sword out of advanced alloys to look like Guts' Dragonslayer sword.

He soon found the troll in the bathroom that Hermione would have been in if Ron's insensitive mouth had been allowed to run itself earlier that day. Clark held the sword in two hands for better control, and while floating behind the troll, he swung the sword over head at the troll. It felt awkward and his swing hit the ceiling. Oops. Thankfully the advanced build of the sword that Jorv made held up to the damage Clark put it through, and he successfully sliced into the troll's back before the momentum stopped.

Shrugging at not killing it in one hit, Clark pulled the sword free as the troll bellowed and spun around. Thinking that the next time he wields a sword he's going to practice beforehand, Clark aimed for the troll's mouth, and stabs the sword up and through its head, killing it.

Looking at all the green blood everywhere, as well as the incredible stink, Clark realized maybe he went a bit overboard. Looking up at the deep gouge in the stone ceiling Clark thought he may have been focusing more on what looks cool, and not what is efficient in dispatching the dangerous creature. Now that he tested it, swinging a nearly six foot long sword around in tight quarters isn't the best way to go about this particular task.

'Oh well, this is why I'm trying things like this out with opponents that aren't too dangerous. Maybe a sword more suited to my size? I'll have to go take some sword lessons sometime anyway.' Clark pondered as he cast a cleaning charm on his sword before putting it away.

Pulling out a trunk, he enlarged it and levitated the troll inside the trunk. He wasn't going to leave a troll for Snape to turn into potions ingredients. It might be petty, but the dour spy and useless teacher didn't deserve any consideration from Clark.

After cleaning up and repairing the bathroom, Clark sneakily made his way back to the Great Hall to rejoin his friends. Seeing that Hermione and Neville were awake again, and looking around the Hall like they hadn't seen it for a long time, Clark was happy everyone was safe. Clark stood nearby after greeting everyone and gave a subtle thumbs up to them that the troll was taken care of.

Hermione then stared at Harry intently. "You knew about the troll, didn't you?" She stated, sounding like she already knew the answer.

"What?! No, of course not!" Harry's shifting eyes and stuttered voice didn't sell his lie very well.

"Don't give me that!" Hermione snapped. "I've been having dreams the past week about crazy things happening in the future."

Neville's muttered "You too?" was picked up by Clark and Kara due to their sensitive hearing.

"But I was only able to watch events happen, I couldn't interact with anyone." Hermione continued, rushing her words out almost without breathing.

Clark looked around for anyone who might be eavesdropping. Seeing no one, but not willing to take a chance he cast anti-eavesdropping spells around them. That should do until they get to a more secure area.

"Tonight when Professor Quirrell burst in and announced the troll, I suddenly remembered everything! Earlier I should have been crying in a bathroom stall, when the troll came in and k-killed me. But you punched Ron before he could say anything and made sure I was at the feast. You remember too, don't you!" Hermione finished, almost shouting. She started sobbing, and Harry wrapped her up in a hug to comfort her.

Clark interrupted before Harry could say anything. "Let's move this discussion to a more secure area." He suggested. "You come with too, Neville. I'm sure you want to hear what's happening." At Neville's solemn nod, they all got up and made their way to the Room of Requirement, carefully avoiding the teachers still about.

When they got settled in, with Hermione sitting on a couch next to Harry, Harry began his tale. He told the highlights of his last life, with all the tragic points. When Hermione heard how Harry tried to help her in their past life, even trying to run off by himself before being stopped by Percy, Hermione glomped him in a hug.

Hermione soon explained her reaction. "I remember everything about how I died all alone, killed by that troll. It seemed as if no one cared about me. Then I seemed to be a spirit, not really a ghost. I couldn't interact with anyone, I could only watch what was happening. I saw a conversation between Professors Dumbledore and Snape about how Professor Quirrell cast a compulsion spell on me to stay in that bathroom. That I was to be part of the distraction to the Professors while he attempted to steal the stone. Those, those horrible teachers knew he was there to steal the stone and they did nothing to stop him from killing me!" She bitterly cried.

The realization that the authority figures she looked up to the most in school did nothing and let her die seemed to hurt her deeply.

Hermione then told them that from her perspective she seemed to follow Harry around a lot over the next seven years. She noticed how much he changed after that Halloween, and hoped that meant that he somehow cared about her. It was horrible feeling like she was forgotten and no one cared about her.

Harry was quick to reassure her how much he regretted not being able to help her, and that she was the reason he never spoke to a Weasley again after that night. She was never forgotten. It took a while to calm Hermione down from her heartbreaking emotional rollercoaster.

Harry picked up his tale, talking about it for Hermione and Neville's sake. Hermione and Neville had somehow woken up memories of the past timeline earlier that Halloween night. As Harry spoke, Hermione and Neville occasionally added or corrected some things that Harry told.

The three Gryffindors sharing their memories from the past time line seemed very cathartic for the trio. The shared misery lightened the load, and made them realize all the more that they had a second chance in front of them, with people that cared for them. And they weren't going to give up the opportunity.

When they had wound down, Clark suggested they sleep here in the Room of Requirement for the evening, and spend tomorrow going over all their plans so that Hermione and Neville would be up to speed.

* * *

The next morning the first thing Clark did was to have the Room of Requirement make a passage to the kitchens so he could have the House Elves provide them with some breakfast. Those elves were very accommodating.

After everyone had eaten and taken care of their personal needs, Clark rehashed what they had already gone over at the start of the year. He went over the history of Harry as well as alternate Harry and reviewed their plan of attack.

Neville, with his wizard born and raised perspective raised a few key points that they had been unaware of previously. They soon modified their plan accordingly.

By dinner time everyone was exhausted, either mentally or emotionally, if not physically. It had been another long day with many revelations and discussions. Hermione had to come to terms with the fact that if not for this group of friends, she would be dead the previous night. Neville had to adjust his worldview to include things beyond the wizarding world, and there were many shifts from what he'd always taken as truth about how life and society was. Harry was endlessly glad he'd gotten his best friend Neville back, and he now had a chance to get be totally open with Hermione and get to know her better.

The group used the time turners after dinner and snuck into their beds to rest for the night.

* * *

Now that Hermione and Neville were fully aware of everything that the group planned, Clark decided they could kick up the training a notch. Clark and Neville snuck out the next day, on Saturday, to go to Diagon Alley and get Neville a new wand.

Now that Neville had seven more years memory of life and magical training, he wasn't the shy little Gryffindor he used to be. His personality was still somewhat reserved and laid back, but he was much more assertive and strong willed than he was previously.

Hermione and Neville were both given a communication device so they could always communicate with each other, join the others in their studies during certain classes, and coordinate meetings and training. Hermione especially felt she was so far behind the others because while she'd been able to watch what was happening for seven years, she had been unable to practice or study on her own.

It took some work from the whole group to convince her that they would never leave her behind and she didn't need to study 24/7 to catch up. She was part of this group and she had no reason to prove herself, they accepted her as she was. Hermione finally calmed down and returned to her previous attitude of studying because she loved it, not because she was frantic to prove her worth to the group.

The occlumency lessons that Clark was giving the group seemed to help Hermione relax her frantic need to catch up. When she found out that after a certain level of proficiency she would be able to build a mind palace and have perfect recall, she was ecstatic. She would no longer have to re-read her books several times to memorize everything. Only needing to read the material once would give her so much more time to do what she loved: to learn.

The group continued to use the Time Turners to add extra days of learning and training. Sometimes they would use the extra time for just relaxation days, spending it on beaches relaxing or playing. Downtime was important so they didn't burn out.

Clark noticed that because of the way the group had been split up among the houses, Kara ended up gravitating towards Neville, and to a lesser extent Harry and Hermione. Prior to Halloween, Neville had hung around Harry more than the two girls, due to his shy personality around the girls. But after Halloween and the remembrance of his past life, Neville was a much more mature and solid presence among the group.

Kara especially seemed to appreciate Neville's new maturity, and found his personality comforting. Clark hadn't expected Neville to be able to interest Kara previously because of the differences in their mental ages. But now that they were both about 17 in 11 year old bodies, they seemed to mesh well. Judging from Harry's memories about how reliable and loyal Neville had become, Clark didn't have any problem if Kara decided Neville was the man for her. Only time would tell if that would actually happen. But hey, they will have seven years of schooling in close proximity, so Clark was betting that it would happen.

The Christmas break snuck up on the group, and everyone was happy for the break. Hermione and Neville especially were happy they could spend the break with their family. It felt to them like a lifetime since they had spent time with their family.

When Clark heard them mention that, he suddenly realized that he'd neglected to extend help to one of their group's family. He had Jorv bring in a couple of HFRs so they could accompany Neville to St. Mungos to scan his parents, to see if there was anything they could do to help them recover.

When the scans came back that it would take some months of careful rejuvenation therapy to help them, but that they could regain their mental faculties, Neville was overjoyed. The HFRs took the place of Neville's parents while his parents were sent to the base that Jorv and Clark had built in England for their treatment and recovery. Neville felt it was better to avoid mentioning the whole thing to his Gran until they were better. He didn't know if she could handle the wait if she knew they could recover. By the summer time Neville should be able to reunite with his parents.

Harry was happy to spend time with his Godfather, Sirius. While Sirius had been recovering, Clark had authorized Jorv to pass Sirius a communicator so he could talk and get to know Harry before they spent a Christmas together. They had briefed Sirius on what they had planned, since as the future Lord Black he would be able to throw in his political and monetary might into their corner of the ring for any changes they enacted. Sirius had been all for the "extreme pranking" of the wizarding world that screwed him over so much. Clark supposed that the prankster part of Sirius' personality would never die.

During the Christmas break Clark, Kara, Lana, Chloe, Pete, and Emily were missing their families off in America. But they were happy to meet up with the rest of the group's families and spend time with them.

On Christmas day, strangely enough, Harry didn't receive his invisibility cloak from Dumbledore. There was a lot of guesses among the group as to why that was. The answer everyone decided was most likely was that because Harry had made such a large group of friends and not exhibited what should have been a "meek and downtrodden" attitude that Dumbledore could manipulate, Dumbledore didn't want to give Harry such a useful tool to use to get out from under his thumb. But that was only a guess.

After Christmas it was simply a waiting game for when Quirrell would be able to get through the traps so Harry could have his confrontation with the shade of Voldemort and get the Horcrux removed and attain the knowledge of Riddle.

Midway through January, Clark remembered that sometime soon Quirrell would start killing unicorns in the forest, if he hadn't started already. This put Clark in a bit of a dilemma. Clark put the question to the group as to whether they should stop him from killing unicorns and just wait until he got through the traps. No one really wanted to sit back and let the unicorns die, that was just evil. Just by being there and doing things different the timeline had already changed. So there was no reason to sit back and let murders be done in front of them when they knew it would happen.

Clark had Jorv create some drones that could follow the unicorn herds. When Riddle attacked any of them, the drones could use a hard light hologram to look like centaurs to drive off the possessed body in order to save the unicorns.

They realized that this change, of driving Voldemort away from the unicorns, might make a huge change of how long Quirrell's possessed body could last. They might not get the confrontation at the end of the traps between Harry and Quirrell/Riddle at this rate. So they decided to move the time table up.

First, Clark slipped in to the "obstacle course". Using his knowledge of magic, and his Kryptonian abilities, it was quite easy to avoid the traps and delays. He easily made it into the room with the mirror, and brought out the philosophers stone. Clark scanned the stone with his spells as well as a probe.

Using the information from his scans, Clark was able to create a facsimile that would look like the stone, but have none of the properties. That way, if something went wrong, Voldemort would not be able to steal the real stone. Clark hid the real stone away with Jorv at one of their bases.

Next they dropped "hints" through conversation with each other around Quirrell as to how to get past Fluffy. By the middle of February everything was set for the confrontation. Quirrell was looking like he would start falling apart anytime, so it would probably happen soon.

Due to the alternate Harry's memories, the group knew about the Marauder's Map. No one had any problem with confiscating said map from the Weasley twins, and leaving them confounded about just how or when they lost said map.

On the fifth of March, through the Map, they saw Dumbledore making his way to the front gates. Through Jorv's probe they confirmed that the Headmaster mounted a broom and flew off toward London. Not even a half hour later, they saw him pop back up in his office, presumably by floo. The group could only shake their heads at how obvious his games and manipulations were now that they were aware of it. Honestly, flying a broom to London as the venerable Headmaster, Chief Warlock, and Supreme Chancellor, er…Supreme Mugwump that is, when he could just floo?

Next Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Kara put on their performance after they saw the Quirrel/Riddle dot on the map enter the third floor corridor. McGonagall as expected brushed them off. The four man party then followed Quirrell/Riddle through the traps while Clark, Lana, Chloe, Pete, and Emily waited outside in stealth in a nearby deserted classroom on the off chance that Quirrell/Riddle made it back out. They watched what was happening on the map.

The moment the four man party made it into the potions riddle room, Clark, watching the map, saw Dumbledore making his way leisurely towards the third floor corridor. Clark looked around when that was pointed out. Everyone was fuming at the old man games.

Clark continued to watch the mirror room as the drama played out. Eventually Riddle left Quirrell behind and passed through Harry. Success.

Dumbledore passed through the trap rooms quickly, gathering the group and retrieving an unconscious Harry Potter to be delivered to the Medical Wing.

The next couple of days passed slowly for Clark and the group as they waited for Harry to be finished cataloging the memories he'd received from Riddle's horcrux. It seems the training Harry received over the past year and in his previous life were put to good use, because Harry took half the time alternate Harry had taken. And they found out later in private that Harry had gone through all the memories, not just a few key ones.

When Harry was finally released from the Hospital Wing Prison, they had a celebration to attend in the Room of Requirement. After playing around a bit, and having a nice meal, it was time to get down to business.

Harry looked around at the group that made such a huge change in his life this past year and couldn't help but be grateful for the changes already made. Clearing his throat, Harry began. "To make it short, from Riddle's memories compared to alternate Harry (even Harry had started to refer to the memories Clark got from Halloween as alternate Harry) everything is pretty much the same. We've got the locations of the horcruxes and the Black sisters were enslaved."

Clark nodded. "Well then, aside from going over Riddle's memories in more detail to fine tune the plan, I'd say that Operation Cleaning House is a go for this summer. Neville, after we get the book horcrux from Malfoy, you are free to announce to the world that Frank and Alice are back."

Neville nodded gratefully. He'd already had a few conversations with his parents. They still weren't all there mentally, but by summer time they should be.

"Harry, at the same time you can send Pettigrew on to the DMLE. Malfoy will be neutralized by the time news gets out and unable to make trouble while we get Sirius free legally."

Harry nodded in affirmation. He'd really wanted to be the one to take out Malfoy again, but realized sometimes you just can't get everything you want.

Now that they had confirmation that Narcissa and Bellatrix had been enslaved in this world, Jorv had the order to get Bellatrix out of Azkaban the same way he'd gotten Sirius out. Once Neville found out earlier in the school year that one of his most hated people was likely a slave that was so bound by compulsions and slave magic that she couldn't even think straight, he had had to adjust his outlook on many things. It was difficult for him, but he assured them he wouldn't hold anything against her because of what she was forced to do while enslaved.

"Anyone have anything else they'd like to add or adjust to the plan at the moment?" Clark asked everyone. The group all seemed content with the plan as it stood. "Well, then, let's enjoy the rest of the school year, hunt some Horcruxes, and get ready to kick off the Wizarding Revolution!" Clark raised a glass in toast.

"Viva La Revolution!"


End file.
